


As light, as happy, as merry, as good

by Em_Jaye



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angry Steve Rogers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Found Family, Ghosts of Christmas, Hurt Steve Rogers, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, Irish Sarah Rogers, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Old Peggy Carter, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21596746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: When Steve returned from his last mission, the Infinity Stones replaced and Natasha back among them, he thought the worst was behind him. But adjusting to a world that hadn't ended was more difficult than he'd expected and by Christmas Eve, it's well-past time for an intervention.A Christmas Carol: Steve Rogers edition.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 317
Kudos: 496





	1. Christmas Eve

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so no one asked for this but I've wanted to do it for quite some time and here we are! Special thanks to crimtastic and LittlePlebe for letting me bounce ideas of them and for all the support and love they've both given me year round. 
> 
> I'll be posting one part each Friday until the 20th, then I'll give you guys the finale on Christmas Eve. Sound good? 
> 
> Okay, let's do it.

I. 

_No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty._

_-Charles Dickens_

It was official: Steve Rogers hated Christmas.

This had been a shocking realization; one that had slapped him across the face sometime in early December.

This hadn’t always been the case. He remembered loving Christmas when he was younger—not because he was drowned in gifts like some children he knew, but because it was the one night a year his mother requested not to work. She’d come home by three o’clock and not have to leave again until three the next afternoon. They’d cook dinner together and feel rich as kings with their little feast of roasted ham and potatoes, carrots and green beans and even fresh rolls from the bakery. Sarah Rogers would start setting aside her pennies in the middle of summer to make sure that at least one night a year, her boy went to bed with a full stomach.

Even when he’d gotten older, even after his mother had died, he’d still loved Christmas. Though he and Bucky had never had more than a nickel and a half to rub together, he’d always found himself looking forward to the season. There had always been something extra special that blew into New York on the tail end of November and lingered until January. The snow seemed less bleak. People could be kinder. Even the cold didn’t seem to bite quite so hard. He’d always thought there was something magical about it. 

But of all the years for the magic of the season to have run dry, Steve was a little surprised it was this one. He knew it was just him. He knew there was something a little too wrong with him after everything he'd been through, everything he'd seen and done and had to sacrifice. There was just no easy way to paint on a happy face for the last month of the year. It hurt to try and being out among people and their aggressive good cheer only exhausted him and was slowly filling him with resentment. 

A glass appeared in front of him. Whiskey on the rocks, served in a cloudy, water-spotted tumbler. He looked up to find Weasel wearing a familiar wince. “You look like shit.” His assessment contradicted the blinking, tinsel-trimmed holiday sweater he wore.

Most of the world may have wanted to pretend like everything was fine again. Back to normal. Even better than normal, because five years without half the planet put a lot of things into perspective for plenty of people. But undoing a genocide hadn’t fixed everything for everyone. There was still plenty of darkness in the world. Plenty of wrongs to right. Plenty of people to keep an eye on.

People like the clientele of Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children. The hole-in-the-wall Steve had found himself frequenting more and more often since he’d passed Sam his shield eight months ago. He’d tried to retire. Tried to find something more docile on which to focus his attention and energy like Natasha had done. He thought that if they both got out at the same time, they could lean on one another like they’d done for so many years already. That they’d share the same struggles and roadblocks adjusting to civilian life again.

But that wasn’t what had happened. Natasha was fine. Better than fine. She was doing better than he’d ever seen her. Coming back from the dead had done wonders for her state of mind. Steve was almost tempted to try it himself—though it hadn’t worked out so well for him the first time.

“Thanks,” Steve said gruffly and nodded to the drink. “I didn’t order this.”

“Yeah…I know,” Weasel said slowly. “But you look like you need it.”

“What I need,” Steve countered, keeping his voice low with a cursory check of his surroundings in the mirror behind the bar, “is the information you promised me.”

“I never promised anything,” Weasel reminded him. “I said I’d keep an ear out.”

“And?” Steve prompted.

“And nothing,” Weasel shrugged. “It’s the slow season. Not a whole lotta contracts right now.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the regulars of Sister Margaret’s. A rough crowd of mercenaries, ex-soldiers, ex-cons, and a few others just willing to kill for money. “Seems like you’re staying busy enough,” he commented as he reached for his drink.

Weasel shrugged again. “Yeah, ‘cause I serve cheap beer and it’s free to play pool, man.” He shook his head. “Y’know, not everyone who walks through my door is a bad guy,” he said, dropping his voice so only Steve could hear him. “I know you’re looking for someone to Captain Americanize,” he added, just as quietly. “But maybe you should think about taking a break from the hero thing. Get a hobby. Or a girlfriend.”

“I don’t need a reintegration counselor, Weasel,” Steve said plainly. “I need to know who hired Daken last and where’s he’s going.”

But Weasel was already shaking his head. “No, no, I don’t fuck with Daken. He runs his own shit—” Steve rolled his eyes and slid a few hundreds across the bar. Weasel pocketed the money and dropped his voice again. “I don’t know if he took the job, but Sebastian Shaw was looking for him, last I heard.”

Steve blinked. “And?” he said again. “What’s he want with him?”

“I don’t know,” he held up his hands. “I’m serious, man. That’s above my paygrade. And honestly, I don’t even like _talking_ about Daken…he could kill me like, forty-seven different ways.”

Steve looked around again. “Everyone in this bar could kill you forty-seven different ways.”

“Yeah, but they _wouldn’t,_ ” he said, almost indignant. “And look, it’s none ‘a my business, but didn’t you retire from this shit? I thought your bird friend was Captain America now.”

“He is,” Steve said shortly.

He and Weasel stared at one another for a long moment before Weasel blinked first and shrugged again. “Told you all I know. And if I know Shaw, he’s going to make it pretty hard to track down what he needs the extra muscle for.”

“That’s not a problem.”

It was Weasel’s turn to roll his eyes. “Dude, it’s Christmas Eve. Go home and relax your brow for a few days. You can go back to glowering all you want on the 26th.”

Feeling dismissed, Steve threw back the whiskey and let it burn his throat all the way down to his stomach. “I’ll be back,” he warned as he got to his feet.

“Can’t wait,” Weasel quipped. “I’d wish you a merry Christmas but—”

“Don’t,” he said and left the smoke-filled bar while he still had the last word. The wind blew an icy blast straight into his face as soon as he opened the door. He grimaced and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather coat; grateful, not for the first time, that he’d let his beard grow back. He took the shortest route back to the tower, walking as quickly as he could from the subway, doing his best to avoid as much of the crush of people out and about on Christmas Eve.

There were people _everywhere._ Clustered in large groups, taking photos in hideous sweaters, arms full of shopping bags. Steve wanted to avoid them. He didn't want to think about how misguided all of this cheer and merriment was when there were still people like the men he'd been tracking for the last six months. 

“ _Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”_ Nat King Cole crooned at him as soon as he got in the elevator. Steve rolled his eyes and tried to mute it while the car raced upstairs. Unlike the music that played the rest of the year, Steve found that the Christmas music was not able to be silenced. He cursed whatever tech was allowing Stark to torment him from beyond the grave like this. He couldn’t get into his apartment fast enough.

His dark, sparse apartment. The one he’d been meaning to completely move into since May. The one with most of his things still packed in boxes that had been shoved in corners, some with an inch of dust accumulated. Nothing hanging on the walls. Barely anything hanging in the closets. And certainly no Christmas decorations.

He frowned as he turned on the light.

No Christmas decorations, but a large stack of colorful envelopes on his kitchen counter. A square yellow note was attached to the top envelope in handwriting he recognized immediately as Bucky’s. _Check your mail every now and then, punk._ He peeled off the note and stuck it to the side before he started flipped through the stack, listlessly checking the return addresses. No one he wanted to hear from—even in the form of a cheerful Christmas card.

Maybe even _especially_ in the form of a cheerful Christmas card.

His phone buzzed with a text as he shoved the cards down the bar and his heart sank just a little more when he saw who it was.

Jason Sousa. The name jumped out amidst the missed calls and texts from more familiar contacts from the last few days.

Peggy’s grandson.

_Dad asked me to remind you about lunch tomorrow. Wanted to let you know you’re welcome to join us._

He fought back a scoff and shook his head. It didn’t surprise him that Jason had initiated the invitation by letting him now it was at the behest of someone else. Peggy’s youngest grandson had always regarded him warily. Eyeing Steve up like he was there to steal his grandmother away from her family. He’d never actually accepted an invitation to join the Carter-Sousa collective for a holiday and he wasn’t going to start now. His relationship had been with Peggy—no one else had known him like she had. A holiday spent with Peggy’s family and no Peggy sounded like a tour through a particularly unpleasant level of hell. Especially now.

 _Thanks,_ he wrote back. _But I don’t think I’ll make it this year._

 _K,_ came the immediate response. _I’ll pass it on._

Feeling thoroughly dismissed for the second time that hour, Steve flipped his phone over and dropped down onto one of the stools at the counter. He didn’t want to think about Peggy’s family. Thinking about them would only make him think about her. About how he’d had her in her his arms, her hair against his cheek, her heart beating right beside his, and he’d left her a second time. Left her to come back to this year and time, drawn away by the memory of his friends. His family. People he thought had still needed him. Sam. Bucky. Natasha.

But every day since, he’d had a harder and harder time remembering why he’d thought that. Why that decision had been easy to make. Why he felt he needed to come back at all.

Sam was busy—the good kind of busy. The kind Steve didn’t have the brain space for anymore. Sam had a new team to recruit. New people to train and teach to work as a team. New missions. New life. And he was really, _really_ good at it. He’d fallen into the role of Captain America like he was born for it, leaving Steve no doubt that the right man was holding that shield while they all navigated a world that was being described as post-post-apocalyptic.

Bucky…if he was being honest, Bucky was most of the reason he’d come back. He wanted to be there for him for a change, to finally have a moment where the world wasn’t about to end or they weren’t about to be hauled off by INTERPOL to talk. Catch up. To reclaim some semblance of normalcy. And they’d had that at first. For the first month everyone was back together, things were good. A little strange, but good.

He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. This wasn’t fair, he reminded himself. Things were _still_ good. For Bucky and Natasha, they were even great. Better than they’d ever been. The two of them reconnecting after so many years apart—after so much darkness and distance away from each other—had transformed them both into the best versions of either that Steve had ever seen.

What kind of monster would hold their happiness against them?

A knock at the door snapped his attention back to the present and he debated not answering it for a whole second before his guilt kicked in and brought him to his feet. That guilt only intensified when he pulled the door open and realized who’d had the bad luck to pay him a visit that afternoon.

The smile Darcy usually wore fell slightly when she met his eyes, assuring him that he had not faked a pleasant expression quickly enough to fool her. “Hey, handsome,” she said quietly, looking less than certain that she wanted to come in when he stepped to the side and held open the door.

“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind her. “I…uh, didn’t know you were back.”

“Just an hour ago,” she said as she slipped out of her coat and unwound her scarf from her neck. She shook out her long, dark hair and raked a hand through the curls. “Dulles was a fucking nightmare and Hill’s staying until New Year’s so I took the train back instead.” She shot him a quick and entirely fake smile. “Ross sends his love.”

Despite his terrible mood, Steve managed a smirk. “He tell you that?”

“Well, he said he’s still got a thousand reasons to send you to prison and a cell on The Raft with your name on it—” she shrugged. “But, y’know, so many men have trouble expressing their feelings.” She tossed her coat on the back of his armchair and turned back with a real smile. A little shy, just a hint of the bright, brilliant one that had first captured his attention a few months ago. “But um, speaking of feelings,” she crossed the few feet between them to stand in front of him. Close enough he could feel the cold still radiating from her face and hair. “I missed you.”

Steve felt some of his frustration ebb away when she rose up on her toes to brush her lips to his. He brought a hand to her cheek and held her to him, deepening the kiss. “I missed you, too,” he said when she pulled away and sank back down.

He wasn’t lying. Darcy was one of the few things that kept coming to mind when he wondered why he’d come back after his last mission. Maybe nobody needed him anymore. Maybe Bucky and Natasha had each other back and neither needed him they way they used to. Maybe Sam and Wanda had their hands full with a whole new team of Avengers and the way they’d all depended on each other for survival before just didn’t make sense now. Maybe the world was different, and he just wasn’t the kind of person who was needed the way he’d been before.

But Darcy didn’t need him. Darcy wanted him. In her life, in her apartment, in her bed. They’d met at the end of the summer and fallen into a surprisingly easy rhythm of something more than friendship, but less than a relationship. He was pretty sure it was a little more than a friends-with-benefits arrangement.

The specifics were something he'd been thinking he should clarify since they'd started sleeping together a month ago; but somehow, whenever they were together, he kept forgetting to ask. Whatever it was, it was nice. Uncomplicated. It'd even be fun if Steve let himself enjoy anything for more than a few days at a time. Despite his erratic schedule, his less-than-pleasant moods, Darcy kept coming back. And not for any reason he could see, other than she had decided she liked him. Though most days, he didn’t know why she did that either. But when he remembered that she did, he felt guilty all over again for wishing he’d stayed with Peggy.

Darcy deserved better than that.

She laced her fingers with his and tugged him back toward the kitchen. “When’s the last time you went grocery shopping?” she asked, releasing his hand as she approached the refrigerator.

“Uh…” Steve stopped in the doorway and grimaced.

Darcy looked over her shoulder and shot him a grin. “Steve. This refrigerator is a tragedy. You have,” she held the door open and motioned to the shallow shelves, “six different kinds of mustard and no real food.”

“Right,” he nodded. “I, uh, was going to go shopping. But…” he glanced down. “I got tied up with some stuff.”

She studied him thoughtfully. "Out of town stuff?" she asked carefully. Darcy knew what he’d been doing. Where he’d been spending his time. She hadn't tried to stop him, but she didn't seem to want to know any of the specifics, either. 

That worked well for him. He didn't want to share them. "Yeah," he said. "I was gone for the last few days." 

Darcy’s smile dimmed for a moment before she brightened again. “Well, no worries. I love a nice glass of spicy brown mustard as much as the next girl, but there’s no point in spoiling my appetite.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned in the door frame. “Big plans?”

“Well yeah,” she closed the fridge with a soft laugh. “First big Wilson Family Christmas Eve dinner in—” she stopped and frowned. “You completely forgot, didn’t you?”

Everything within him twisted and he dropped his arms. He ran his hand over his face again and groaned before he shook his head. “No,” he said honestly. “But tonight’s not a good night.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” she reminded, looking a little less amused. “Sam told us about it a month ago. His whole family’s up from Virginia for the week, his mom’s making dinner for like, twenty-five people.”

“Yeah, I remember the invitation,” he groused. “I’m just not going to be able to make it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What do you have going on instead?”

“I, uh, I’ve gotta lead I need to track down,” he said vaguely. Even if Darcy didn’t seem to mind his extra-curricular activities, he still didn't want her mixed up in any of it. “I’ve been looking for this guy for the last two months.”

“And you know exactly where he is now?” she asked; a kind of leading question that made him wonder why she hadn’t pursued a law career. “This guy you’ve been chasing?”

He opened his mouth to lie but thought better of it. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “No.”

“Then is a few hours spent with your friends going to make that much of a difference?” She waited for a response, but when none came she continued. "You just got back," she reminded him needlessly. "Bucky said he's been trying to get a hold of you all week."

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m just…not great company right now,” he said finally. “Okay? I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I can see that.” He felt her eyes on him as he returned to his seat at the counter. Idly, he flipped his phone face-up, dismayed to be reminded that he hadn’t backed out of his texts and Jason’s half-hearted invitation was still on display. “Steve?” Darcy’s voice brought his attention back to where she was standing on the other side of the bar, her hands resting on the counter.

“Yeah?” he asked, more of a bark than he meant. He watched her blink in surprise and felt guilty again. She shouldn’t be here, he decided. She didn’t deserve to be subjected to all his unpleasantness. None of it had anything to do with her and if he let her stay and keep pushing him, he was bound to say something he’d regret.

“I, um, I know you’ve got this whole…one-man justice crew thing going on, and it’s working for you,” she added quickly. “Really. It’s a good look. But um,” she wet her lips and pressed them together nervously. “It’s starting to take a toll. I’m worried about you.”

He shook his head and looked down again. “I’m fine,” he said firmly. “It’s part of the job.”

When he glanced up, her face had wrinkled in confusion. “What job is that, exactly?” When he didn’t answer, she went on. “Who’s asking you to do this?”

“No one needs to ask me,” he said, feeling his hackles rise. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to take whatever this was out on her; he just needed her to take the hint and leave him alone for the night. “It just needs to be done.” He could apologize tomorrow, when he’d had time to figure out his next move.

“By you, specifically?” she challenged. “Completely alone and running yourself ragged like this?” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m not saying stop. Just…take a night off. Tonight, preferably.”

He rubbed his eyes again. “I appreciate your concern,” he said finally, hearing in her scoff that it was the wrong thing to say. “And I’ll apologize to Sam tomorrow but,” he shook his head and looked at her again. “This is something I’ve gotta do.”

“No,” she shook her head. “It isn’t.” The sigh he let out was loud enough that she had to raise her voice over him to continue. “Because _this_ is all you do, Steve. This is all you’ve ever done and you don’t have to do it anymore. Yes, there are always going to be bad guys but you’re not the only person who has to fight them. Wasn’t that the whole point of letting someone else take over? So that you could get to do something else?”

He stood up, feeling caged and with frustration bubbling hot in his throat. “What am I supposed to do? Just sit back and let everything go to hell again?”

“It’s not going to hell!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “If you’d look up from your incredibly depressing to-do list of starting fights and avoiding people, you’d notice that things aren’t as bad as you want them to be.” She softened and reached for his hand. “I didn’t come here to fight with you,” she said, tentatively sliding her palm against his. “But I just think you’ve been in this mindset for so long—you might need help getting out.”

He resisted the urge to shake her off. “I’m fine—”

“You’re not fine, Steve,” she said with a hopeless little laugh. “You’re not even listening to me because you don’t want to hear this but I’m going to say it anyway. Every day doesn’t have to be the end of the world. And—” she squeezed his hand, “you don’t have to put all this on yourself like you’re the only one who can stop every bad thing that might happen.” She bit her lip. “Maybe you could do us both a favor and at least consider entertaining the idea that you were meant for more than this.” 

_You were meant for more than this._

The words went through him like an electric shock and he had the surreal feeling of being in two places at once. Here in his kitchen and in a leaking, mud-covered tent in Italy in 1944. He shook his head and tried to push that memory away. He didn’t want to think about that day—he didn’t want to think about that war at all. Not when there were so many right here in front of him that needed his attention. “I don’t want to fight either,” he said, finally, hoping he’d shoved those memories far enough down that they wouldn’t choke him the next time he spoke.

The hand around his tightened. “Good,” she smiled. “You don’t want to fight; I don’t want to fight. Why can’t we just not fight and try to—”

Another bolt of frustration spiked inside him. She said it like it was so easy. Like he could just give up everything he'd been doing. The only person he'd ever been “Because what if you’re wrong, Peg—” As soon as her name slipped so harshly past his lips, Peggy faded from his memory. He wasn’t in Italy anymore, about to run off on a suicide mission to save Bucky. He was standing in his kitchen, watching as Darcy recoiled in surprise, her red lips frozen half an inch apart. “Darcy.” He said, correcting himself a thousand years too late as she dropped his hand like she'd been burned. “I meant.” He closed his eyes and let the mortification wash over him. “I meant Darcy.” Her eyes dropped to the tile and he watched a dozen expressions cross her face before she settled on a very sad, resigned smile that managed to break his heart before she smothered it again and looked up. “Darcy,” he said, like repeating her name now was going to make up for what had just happened. “I’m sorry. I—”

“It’s fine,” she said quickly and cleared her throat. She looked back over her shoulder at the clock. “But that um…” she turned her head back and looked past him, toward the door, avoiding his eyes entirely. “God," she shook her head. "That really feels like my cue to go."

He sighed as she made a move to get past him without touching him. “Can you please—”

“No,” she stopped when she’d made it to the other side of the doorway, halfway between him and the front door. “No, I can’t. I have better things to do than be a punching bag or a rehabilitation center for whatever the hell you're angry at today while you're wishing I was somebody else." She shook down the sleeves of her red sweater and pulled the cuffs back over her wrists. "So I'm not going to stay or wait or pretend that didn’t just happen and you shouldn’t want me to do any of that anyway, because now I’m leaving you alone which is what you wanted in the first place so,” she pursed her lips and offered him a quick thumbs up. “Good job.”

“Fuck,” he breathed, shaking his head. “Darcy, I’m sorry—”

She held up a hand while she grabbed her coat from the back of the chair. “I’m _sure_ you are,” she said, taking a moment before she looked at him again. “But honestly? I’ve only had one really insecure question floating around the back of my mind every single time we’ve been together, and you just answered it for me.”

Everything he’d been hoping not to do to Darcy: all the baggage he’d been trying not to project onto her, every way he’d kept telling himself to be better around her, it all seemed to end up as a pile of ash. Sitting on his tongue, choking him slowly, making it impossible for him to say anything that would get her to see that she was wrong. That he wanted her to stay. Needed her to stay.

“So,” she continued, because he hadn’t said anything to stop her. He hadn’t said anything at all. “I’m just going to stop kidding myself,” she motioned first to herself and then to him. “You just enjoy your solitude and try not get yourself killed and uh,” a brief, joyless smile lifted her lips for a moment. “Merry Christmas, I guess.”

He could have stopped her if he really wanted to. Could have made her stay, or at least chased her out into the hallway and apologized again. An actual apology—the kind he meant, where he told her it wasn’t what she’d just turned it into. That he couldn’t always focus on one moment at a time. That sometimes his memories were so vivid they felt like they were really happening all over again, dragging him back in time to relive them as clearly as the present.

But he stayed where he was, letting the sound of the door slamming carelessly behind her reverberate off the empty walls. Because despite what he could do or say to try to make her come back, he couldn’t deny that she was better off walking away. No matter how much he liked her, how easily they fit together, how much better he usually felt when she was around, and how well she seemed to understand him, the fact was that Steve knew he wasn’t a good person to be with. He never had been.

Darcy deserved better than to be with someone who didn’t know how to live in a world that wasn’t ending.

He'd started pacing before he realized it. Moving around the open space of his apartment like an animal, confined in a space too small for his anxious energy. He tried sitting down for all of thirty seconds before he jumped back up and decided there was only one thing that was going to help burn off some of this frustration. He changed his clothes and locked his door behind him, hoping that going for a run would give him the space he needed to think.

A brief twinge in his stomach made him remember it had been a little too long since he’d had anything real to eat. Darcy’s comment about the state of his refrigerator was valid enough to keep him from changing his mind and running back upstairs. He stopped on the fifteenth floor on his way back down to the street. The communal kitchen was gigantic and always fully stocked with anything and everything any resident of the tower could want to snack on. Steve spotted and claimed a blood orange from a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter the moment he walked in.

He'd sunk his thumb through the peel and was working his way around the edge when he felt it. An unpleasantly familiar pinprick at the back of his mind. He looked up, unsurprised to find that Wanda had appeared in the doorway and focused her gaze on him. She studied him with a curious tilt of her head and Steve felt all his frustration bubble right back up to the surface.

“Wanda,” he said evenly, trying to get his temper back under control. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop what you’re doing.” He caught the way her eyes narrowed just a fraction before they dropped to her bare feet. But the feeling didn’t dissipate. Steve felt his hackles rise again. “Wanda,” he barked. “Stop it. I don’t want you reading me.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said, sounding indignant. “But you’re so loud,” she winced. “I can’t hear anything else.” She shook her head as if trying to clear away what she’d just read in his thoughts before she cleared her throat and softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said quickly. “And I’d like you to get out of my head, please.”

“Yes, you’re making that very obvious,” she said evenly. “It would be easier for me to do that if I wasn’t worried about you. We all are.”

Steve dropped his half-eaten orange on the counter and swiped a hand over the lower half of his face, clearing his mouth and beard of any fruit juice or pulp. “Seems to be a common theme today.”

Wanda crossed her arms over her chest and looked unruffled by the temper she was testing. “The last six months, actually.”

He rolled his eyes and abandoned his plans for the rest of his orange. “Well, you can stop,” he said shortly. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she said after him as he made his way toward the stairs again. “You should rest.”

“Take the night off?” he asked, repeating Darcy’s suggestion as he turned back around. “Pretend to be moved by the Christmas spirit?”

Wanda moved a shoulder. “I can think of worse ways to spend an evening.”

He shook his head. “Just…enjoy your night, Wanda. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Steve,” her voice stopped him a second time just when he’d reached the door. He waited a long beat before he finally turned around. Wanda’s mouth opened and closed once, her expression was troubled, as though she had a dozen things to say, all fighting to make it to the tip of her tongue first. After a moment, she closed her mouth and shook her head. “Just be careful.”

He nodded, feeling oddly disappointed. He didn’t know if he was hoping she’d keep needling him and provoke him into an actual fight that might make them both feel better; or if he’d been hoping she would keep talking, telling him she was worried about him, asking him to stay for Christmas Eve.

Steve shook away both possibilities as he finally made his way out of the tower and back onto the street. Maybe she had wanted to ask him to stay, to keep him home for a night with the rest of the people she’d adopted as her family. But he had the feeling that whatever she’d seen or read in his mind had dissuaded her from trying to make that happen.

Again, he shook his thoughts away and tried to reset his focus. Daken, he reminded himself. Sebastian Shaw had hired Daken for something. He started to run, his body responding much quicker and with more fluidity than his emotions ever did. He was warmed up again in no time. Blood pumping, heart working, breath clouding in front of his face as he ducked down side streets and between buildings to avoid the crowds. Shaw. the name rose back to the top of his mind and brought with it the unpleasant associations with The Hellfire Club and it’s other unsavory members.

Last he’d heard, Shaw was in South America. Columbia. Every part of him sighed. If Shaw was still there, then the job he needed Daken for was likely something to do with drugs. Even more likely to involve kids and drugs. That tended to invite a higher level of risk and violence and bloodshed than the people he’d been going after lately. But nothing he couldn’t handle, he reminded himself, briefly wondering if this was something he should tell Sam about. It had potential to be ugly; anything with Shaw had that—especially when someone as ruthless and remorseless as Daken was on board. He considered it as he turned left down another unfamiliar alley. It wouldn’t kill him to have some backup. Or at least someone from his team know what he was up to.

No, the thought almost stopped him in his tracks. Not his team. They weren’t his team anymore. They were just…people he knew. Friends. But not a team—not his—and while getting them involved likely wouldn’t get _them_ killed, it might take them away from somewhere else they were needed. It might get someone else killed.

The alley he’d chosen ended abruptly in a brick wall and a row of green dumpsters. Not remotely tired or even having worked up a sweat, Steve turned back around and continued his run. Blocks and buildings rushed past him in a blur of brownstones and storefronts and traffic as he wondered how long or how far he’d have to go to outrun the feeling tugging at the back of his shirt. The one telling him that he’d really screwed up.

He turned left again. Then right. A few more blocks. Another right.

An image of Darcy’s downcast eyes, the unintentional pout of her lips as she tried to hide the way he’d just confirmed her insecurities, crept back to the forefront of his memory as he turned down another side street. How long would he have to run before he stopped feeling like such a piece of shit? All night? A few days? Would he make it to Columbia before the memory finally faded of how his own idiocy had just slapped the possibility of anything good with Darcy right out of his hands?

Any other day, he probably would have noticed the ice. He would have been paying closer attention, would have been checking in with his surroundings better, noticing the unkempt nature of the sidewalks on this street. He would have caught the way it seemed like the temperature had dropped a dozen degrees as soon as the cloud-covered sun finally slipped behind the skyscrapers.

But he didn’t notice any of that. He wasn’t thinking about the cold or the fact that it had been freezing rain off and on all day. He was thinking about Darcy and Peggy and the mess that would be waiting for him when he finally had to turn around and go back home. He didn’t notice the dip in the sidewalk or the pool of thick, black ice until his foot connected with it.

He'd been running too fast. Hit the ice with too much speed. He didn’t have time to correct his gait, to try to adjust and right himself before his feet went out from under him. He hit the ground in stages. First a crash to the cold concrete at his tailbone that knocked the wind swiftly from his lungs, then the middle of his back, interrupting what breath he’d tried to draw in shock from the initial blow, and then finally, the back of his head connected so hard with the ground he thought he heard a crack.

Steve barely had time to register what had happened before his vision swirled and blurred and everything went black. 


	2. Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost of Christmas Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the sweet encouragement from part one!

II. 

_"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."_   
_"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"_

Steve felt pressure on his face before he could open his eyes. His brow furrowed and he tried to move his head, not sure if he wanted to move toward or away from the presence he could feel beside him. The pressure did not increase, but his sense sharpened. Warm. Familiar. It was a hand on his cheek. A thumb that gently swiped over his cheekbone. A voice that broke through the fog in his head.

“Up now, my boy.”

If he hadn’t felt so heavy, so weighted down, he would have bolted upright. That voice. Soft and gentle, with the light Irish brogue she’d never lost. That voice was wrong. That voice couldn’t be here.

“I’d pull you up m’self, but you’re much too big for your ol’ mum these days.”

Steve’s eyes opened slowly. He waited for the pain to arrive—the sting that came from laying on cold concrete or the throbbing ache that should have been waiting for him at the back of his head. But there was nothing. Nothing but the feeling of being woken too soon; that clumsy grogginess that made him feel uncharacteristically sluggish. The hand on his face gave him a light pat, forcing him to focus on its owner. The pair of blue eyes looking into his, the fair complexion and rosy cheeks, the smile that was always just a little tired, but always there, tugging at the corner of her lips.

Only it couldn’t have been there, Steve reasoned as he finally pieced everything together. No part of her could have been there. Not her eyes or her voice or her smile or the dark blonde hair that she tucked behind her ear as she moved to give him space to pull himself up to sitting.

There was simply no way that he could be looking at his mother.

He stared as Sarah Rogers—looking _exactly_ as he remembered her—raised her light eyebrows and looked expectant. He blinked again. Several times. She was still there, clearly waiting for him to say something. “What the hell…”

To his surprise, she laughed and stood from where she’d knelt beside him. Her dress was pale yellow, printed with blue flowers and she brushed it off needlessly. He remembered her making that dress, he realized with a pang. She’d made it from the flour sacks she split with Bucky’s mother. “Now, is that any way to greet your mother?”

His head didn’t hurt, but it was spinning. He shook it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “Ma?” he asked finally, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead as he squinted up at her. “You can’t…you can’t be here.”

“Well I am here,” she said plainly and extended a hand to him. “So why don’t you stop lying on the ground and get up and let me have a look at you.”

He took her hand without thinking. It was so much smaller than he remembered. _She_ was so much smaller than he remembered. And younger. He couldn’t believe she’d ever looked so young. She was still small and thin, wrists like the branches of a dogwood tree. He didn’t pull any of her weight toward him to stand up, afraid he’d break her if he did.

On his feet, she only came up to his chest. His heart twisted painfully when she placed her hands on his shoulders and her face lit up with delight. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I always prayed you’d grow up big and strong; but I have say, this is more than I could’ve expected.”

Steve opened his mouth, but nothing was coming out. “Ma….what’s—” he stopped and shook his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you, my love,” she said as if it were the easiest answer in the world. As if she frequently dropped in from the afterlife to pay him a visit.

“No…” he knew the lines in his brow deepened. “You’re…” he looked up and frowned. “You’re—”

“Dead,” Sarah said plainly. “No need to mince words; you’re not going to hurt my feelings.”

She’d been dead for nearly ninety years; it shouldn’t have still hurt to hear that, to think of her as dead and gone, but it did. But that hurt didn’t make sense with the reality of her standing in front of him, the very real feeling of her hands on his shoulders, how everything about her seemed to have been brought to life from the image he’d kept of her, pressed like a flower between the pages of his memory.

He reached a hand back to feel for the fatal head wound he must have certainly received from crashing into the concrete. If he was honest, this was a disappointing way to go. A head injury from slipping on ice? After everything he’d been through? Wars, explosions, murderous robots, Nazis, Hydra, the KGB, armies of alien monsters. To be taken out by a frozen puddle seemed…anticlimactic at best. Kind of pathetic, at worst.

Sarah seized his hand and gave it a squeeze. She was warm and solid to the touch. “ _I’m_ dead, my darlin’; you’re still very much alive.”

“I am?” He looked back at the ground, realizing that he was expecting to see his body sprawled on the sidewalk. Lifeless, bleeding onto the pavement. But there was no one there. There wasn’t even the sidewalk. At least, not the sidewalk where he’d fallen. They were on the street, but not where he’d slipped; they weren’t even in Manhattan anymore, he realized as he looked up and around with wide-eyed confusion.

“Very much,” Sarah repeated with an affirmative nod. “But tell me you recognize where we are now, at least?”

The longer he looked, the more details began to take shape. The street signs at the corner where they stood beneath the street lights. The smell of the fish market down the block. The rundown tenement buildings. The kids in their ragged clothes playing jacks and marbles on the icy building stoops.

Unmistakable sights and sounds of the neighborhood he’d grown up in. “Holy shit…” he murmured, turning in a slow circle as everything he’d forgotten to remember came rushing back. Too clear to be a memory. Too real. “How the hell did we get here?”

The back of Sarah’s hand landed with a hard _thwack_ against his arm. “Watch your mouth, young man,” she chastised, the words so crisp and familiar that they nearly knocked him off his feet again.

“Sorry,” he muttered, more out of reflex than contrition. “What—um—what are we doing here?”

His mother took his hand again and offered him a small, encouraging smile. “I’m trying to remind you of something,” she said softly. “Something it seems you’ve lost.”

Steve paused, reluctant to go with her. “I haven’t lost anything, Ma.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “Lying _and_ swearing now?” She let out a little hum of amusement—one he’d heard so many times it felt wrong that he should have forgotten it. “My heavens, who raised this boy?”

She tugged on his hand and started walking south. He had no choice but to follow. “I’m not…” he sighed. “That wasn’t a lie.”

When she looked back over her shoulder, it was with a sad smile. She stopped and turned back to him. “Steven,” she said softly, a much more serious tone than she’d had before. “You’ve lost so much you can’t even keep track of it all.”

He felt that familiar bubble of frustration and warned himself that he couldn’t get angry with his mother. With the _ghost_ of his _dead mother._ Instead, he took in a very measured breath. “And you’re here to… what? Bring some of it back?”

She looked confused for a moment before she shook her head and continued her walk. “That’s not my job,” she said, not easing his frustration. “That’s _your_ job. I’m only here to make sure you know what you’re looking for.”

He shook his head. “I brought back everyone that I could, Ma,” he said tiredly. “And everything’s back to how it was before—”

“This isn’t about everyone else,” Sarah said, tugging his hand like he was a dawdling child again. “This is about you.”

“Of course it is,” he grumbled under his breath before he quickened his pace to make sure she didn’t have to keep pulling him along behind her.

The further they walked, the deeper Steve noticed the snow collected along the sidewalks and on the streets around them. He instinctively hunched his shoulders against the cold before he remembered he wasn’t feeling it. His breath didn’t cloud in front of his face. There was no chill biting at his skin. He regarded his mother warily. He still didn’t quite believe he wasn’t dead.

He realized where she was taking him only a few moments before they arrived. A crush of people outside the church doors, hymns coming from just inside. Candles in the stained-glass windows and a familiar duo standing apart from the crowd.

The thin, pale blonde was bent in front of a painfully scrawny boy in a coat that was too big, and a scarf wound around the lower half of his face. He could make out their voices as Sarah led them closer, switching from holding his hand to looping her arm through his, as if she were worried about slipping on the icy sidewalk herself.

“Darlin’ I think we should go home and get you into bed,” the young woman was saying as Steve and Sarah approached.

The pile of oversized clothes and scarf coughed deep enough that Steve’s own chest hurt. The child shook his head. “No, Ma. I’m okay. I said I’d help.”

Steve felt his brow furrow. “Is that…”

“Sarah! Steven!” A booming voice from behind them pulled Steve’s attention back and he watched in amazement as a young man walked right past them to approach their younger selves. “Merry Christmas,” he greeted cheerfully.

“Father Walsh,” he remembered out loud. Though his collar was hidden beneath his heavy coat and scarf, Steve recognized the young priest who always seemed to have boundless energy and a kind word or smile for him and his mother. He glanced down at his companion with half a grin stuck in the corner of his lips. “You know, I always thought he kind of liked you, Ma.”

Sarah looked up with pink cheeks. “Oh, hush; he did not.”

“Merry Christmas, Father,” the younger Sarah said as she stood upright. “Maybe you can talk some sense into my boy here.”

Father Walsh looked momentarily delighted. “Maybe I can—what seems to be the problem?”

“I said I’d help serve supper tonight,” the child-Steve pulled the scarf down from his nose and mouth so he could be heard over the sounds of the street. “And Ma wants me to go home because I’m sick.”

“He’s not contagious,” Sarah put in quickly. “He won’t get anyone else sick while he’s here. It’s just his asthma that’s giving him so much trouble lately.” Her features pinched in a familiar expression of worry and Steve felt guilty again for all the anxiety he’d caused her while he was growing up. “I know I said we’d help at the kitchen tonight,” she added regretfully, “but I’m worried he’ll exhaust himself trying to do too much if we stay and help out.”

Father Walsh accepted this with a slow nod of understanding before he bent and placed his hands on his knees to look the boy in the eye. “Your ma’s got a point, son,” he said with a half-smile. “You’re likely to make yourself sicker if you stay.”

“I won’t,” Steve watched himself say stubbornly. “I promise.”

The priest laughed faintly. “You promise, eh?” he repeated. “Why’s it so important that you stay and help us out tonight?”

“Because I said I would,” the little boy answered. “Sister Margaret said this is the busiest night for people needing a hot meal and you need all the—” another bone-rattling cough cut his sentence in half, but he recovered quickly— “help you can get. And if you say you’re going to do something,” he added, “you should do it.”

Father Walsh nodded again, slowly, before he glanced back to Sarah who was still shaking her head. “I appreciate that you’re a man of your word,” he said seriously. “But that cough ‘a yours is no laughing matter. I don’t know that running back and forth serving stew and bread and cleaning up after folks is going to make it much better. And as much as we do need the extra hands, and I’m sure you and your ma would be a big help, I couldn’t live with myself if I knew I’d let you run yourself down like that.”

Steve watched his younger self contemplate this for a long moment before his eyes lit up and he leaned in closer as if to conspire with Father Walsh in a near-whisper. He felt a nudge at his side and glanced over to find his mother looking up at him, expectantly. “You remember what you did?” she asked.

He frowned. “No,” he admitted after a moment of searching his memory. Why had he forgotten this? How had he forgotten so much?

But Sarah only smiled. “You ran the three blocks home and got your brand-new sketchbook—the one you saved all your money for almost a year to buy—you remember?”

He felt a smile play across his lips without his permission. “And I drew pictures for everyone who came through the bread line,” he finished the story for her, shaking his head as the memory finally returned. The way he’d carefully folded and torn each new, blank page of his sketchbook into quarters so he’d have enough sheets when it became clear that the people who’d come to the community kitchen were just as hungry for art as they were for food. Even the simple, basic art that his eight-year-old hand could provide.

His mother nodded encouragingly. “And I kept telling you that you didn’t have to keep drawing—and that once your paper was gone, that was it, that we couldn’t afford to get you another sketchbook.” The hand around his arm tightened. “But you said you wanted to keep drawing—because you saw how happy it was making people to get one of your pictures.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Even though it meant you were back to drawing on the leftover butcher paper for another year while you saved up your money again.”

Steve watched his younger self take off at a clumsy sprint down the street on the quest for his new sketchbook and felt his smile slip away. He shook his head in confusion. “What are we doing here, Ma?”

Their surroundings started to fade as soon as he asked the question. Sarah dropped his arm and turned so they were facing each other. “I wanted to make sure you remembered this,” she said and glanced back for one final look before the memory was gone. Her narrow shoulders moved in an easy shrug. “Maybe I just wanted to remember it, too.”

He resisted the urge to sigh. He didn’t want to spend this stolen, impossible time with his mother fighting with her, but her words ruffled him all the same. “What makes you think I’ve forgotten this?”

“Your words and actions, mostly,” she said with a slight tilt of her head. “They aren’t the sort of thing you see and hear from a man who remembers he started out this kind.”

At that, he did sigh and rub at his eyes. “Okay, you’ve made your point. Can I wake up now?”

“Oh no,” she pulled his hand down from his face. “You have a fair ways to go until you can wake up and I don’t think I’ve come close to making my point.”

The frustration bubbled hot in his throat again. “I’m sorry, Ma,” he said, dropping his arms and pulling his hands from her grasp. “I’m sorry that I’m not the same sweetheart you were so proud of but it’s not like I didn’t try to hold onto that.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t—” she started, looking surprised that he’d raised his voice to her.

But her slight recoil and the lift of her eyebrows didn’t stop him from continuing. “And I’m not sorry that you weren’t around to see all this kindness and sweetness beaten out of me but that’s what happens when you spend half your life in one war or another. There’s no space to be sweet when you're trying to stop the world from ending. And I’m…glad you don’t understand that,” he finished as the steam ran out of his argument.

His mother blinked twice before she regained herself and softened again. “I said I was worried you’d forgotten it,” she reminded gently. “Not that it was gone forever. You think the world beat that out of you, but it didn’t,” she pointed to where the memory of the two of them had been a moment ago. “That’s the Steve Rogers people need now. Not the soldier. Not the leader. They need the person you were before all that.”

He shook his head. “Who needs that, Ma?” he asked, hearing even in his own voice how tired he sounded. How done.

“Everyone needs that,” Sarah said with a laugh that sounded more hopeless than amused. “Sam, Wanda, Natasha, Darcy—”

But he was too tired to listen to her rattle off names of people she’d didn’t know. People she couldn’t know. “They’re fine,” he muttered. “Trust me.”

“And what about Bucky?” she asked as if she’d read his mind while crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t you think he’s worried about you? Don’t you think he needs this side of his best friend back?”

“I’ve always needed Bucky a hell of a lot more than he’s needed me—no matter what side you’re talking about.”

Sarah’s lips pursed into a straight line. She slowly shook her head and pointed to her right. “Go inside, please.”

Confused, he turned to see where she was ordering him, surprised to find that when he did, the scene around them had changed. They were no longer outside St. Thomas’ church, but in the hallway of an apartment building. A familiar hallway, he realized with a sinking feeling. The hallway that led to the cramped, drafty apartment he had shared with Bucky. From behind the closed door—the one his mother had just demanded he walk through—Steve heard the rise and fall of voices and the sound of glass shattering and remembered, in an instant, exactly which Christmas Eve this was.

The version of himself he found inside the apartment was twenty years old. Still rail-thin and with blonde hair that fell into his face and desperately needed to be cut. There was glass on the floor from where it had shattered when he’d thrown a tumbler at the wall out of anger moments ago.

Anger at Bucky, he remembered, watching his best friend shove back his hair and clench his jaw. “You’re actin’ like a fuckin’ baby,” Bucky spat across the room at him, shaking his head.

“You’re actin’ like a fuckin’ idiot,” Steve had shot back. “You’re gonna spend our rent money on another goddamn doctor to come down and tell you what? That I’m a lost cause? That I won’t live to see twenty-five? Keep the money, Buck; I just saved him a trip.” He had turned away and waved a hand dismissively in Bucky’s direction. “You got a girl waiting,” he reminded, not bothering to hide the salt in his tone. “Don’t be late on my account.”

“Steve…” Bucky’s shoulders dropped. “Come on. Don’t be like this. Just let me call a doctor and figure out what’s wrong with you?”

“This time,” Steve watched himself turn back. “Figure out what’s wrong with me this time. Because it’s gonna be something different than last time—so that means some new medicine we can’t afford. Some new thing he might wanna try and all for it to come down to the fact that I’ll either get better or I won’t, right? So, what’s it matter?”

That had been a bad winter, he remembered. Worse than most. He’d started getting sick in October—nothing out of the ordinary—but his usual cold had progressed to a cough that had started to turn up a few spots of blood with each spasm of his lungs. His lungs rattled with a deep wheeze on each inhale and sleeping any way other than sitting upright was nearly impossible without a heavy dose of cough syrup.

Only he couldn’t afford the cough syrup on his salary from the paper and after a few weeks without it, he could barely draw a breath. He’d spent November and most of December watching Bucky grow more and more concerned, and thinner and thinner as he siphoned his own food budget to pay for Steve’s medical supplies.

He remembered hating it. Feeling so helpless and weak. Resentful of his own poor health that he was stealing food from his best friend’s mouth. When Bucky had told him he was calling a doctor, spending their rent money before the end of the month, it had pulled the pin in his explosive temper.

“What’s the alternative, Stevo?” Bucky asked, softening with a smile. “I’m supposed to let you die?” He scoffed. “Not a chance.”

“It’d save you a lot of trouble in the long run,” Steve had muttered, turning away from Bucky.

He hadn’t seen it when he was twenty, but from his place across the room, Steve watched how Bucky’s face fell with the weight of what he’d said. How his jaw clenched, and he swallowed hard. He felt a quick flush of guilt when he thought about all the times Bucky _hadn’t_ let him die. How many times he’d nearly gotten himself killed going in after Steve, how all the worst things that had happened to Bucky wouldn’t have if he had just been okay with letting Steve fend for himself.

If he’d seen that look in the moment, Steve told himself, he would have apologized. Bucky wouldn’t have left angry and they wouldn’t have fought anymore. But he hadn’t apologized. And neither had Bucky. And they’d each spent Christmas Eve angry with their best friend which now seemed ridiculous and even at the time had accomplished absolutely nothing except making them both miserable.

In the moment, Bucky only shook his head and grabbed his coat from the rack, slamming the door on his way out. Steve looked over at his mother. “Are you worried I forgot that I’ve always been kind of a di—” Sarah raised a finger and pointed it at him in warning. He coughed. “—fficult person to get along with?”

“No,” she said patiently.

“Because I haven’t,” he went on. “I’m well-aware of how unpleasant I am. Thanks, though.”

“You _are_ unpleasant to be around sometimes,” his mother agreed amiably. “And you’re a terrible patient for someone who’s spent so much of his life sick—”

“Thanks,” he muttered, wondering what he’d have to say to get out of this particular memory.

“But you already know all that,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “This is about what you _don’t_ know. What you missed.”

Before he could ask what that was, the scene before them had shifted and they were standing in the hallway outside the closed door to what used to be his small bedroom. Not much bigger than a closet, but big enough for a single bed and dresser with drawer that stuck and squeaked terribly with each attempt to open them. If he cocked his head toward the door, he could hear his ragged breathing and wheezing and felt himself grimace with the memory of how he'd slept sitting up, each inhale an uphill battle. He’d been so much sicker than he had let himself remember.

The sound of the front door shutting drew his attention upward and he watched with curiosity as Bucky shrugged out of his coat and threw it on the back of the nearest chair. A look at the clock said it was just after midnight; Bucky still wore his troubled expression from earlier while he loosened his tie and started down the hallway. He stopped a foot from where Steve was standing, and Steve was struck with an unexpected twist to his heart.

How long had it been since he’d been this close to Bucky? Since he’d hugged him? He hated that he couldn’t remember—that he’d spent every day of the last five years trying to get his best friend back, only to have let him go again. He hated that it was so much worse to be missing someone who was right in front of him--that he somehow missed him even more than he had when he'd crumbled to ash five years ago.

Bucky didn’t look at him. He couldn’t see him as he raised a fist as if to knock on the door but stopped an inch from the door frame where his knuckles would have landed. He cleared his throat quietly and opened his mouth once before he’d closed it. He turned and leaned his back against the wall before he slid to the ground and put his head in his hands.

“Please don’t die, Steve,” Bucky said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re a pain in the ass and you drive me nuts,” he smiled at the ground as he shook his head. “But I, uh,” he sniffed once and Steve realized with another stab that a tear had fallen on the ground between Bucky's feet. “I need you to get better. I need you around to—” he stopped and pushed at his eyes and Steve wished that he could sit beside him, place a hand on his arm, tell him it was going to be okay. “I need you around ‘cause I don’t know who I’d be without you, pal,” he said to the hallway he thought was empty. “I don’t wanna know what life’s like without my best friend.”

Steve swallowed hard. It’s awful, he wanted to say. It’s too hard. It’s hardly worth it. All the things he’d thought and felt both times he’d lost Bucky came to sit at the tip of his tongue. But before he could say anything, he felt his mother’s small hand on the inside of his elbow again.

“That doesn’t sound like someone who needed a soldier to me,” Sarah said quietly, turning her son to face her. “I could show you a million moments like this one, Steve. Of all the people who have needed you for a million reasons that have nothing to do with being a hero.”

He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you…” he began carefully, pausing in surprise as the hallway faded around them and he found himself back on the sidewalk again.

Not outside the apartment or outside the church. They had been returned to the sidewalk where he’d slipped and fallen. Sarah was shaking her head. “No,” she said firmly. “It’s exactly that you don’t believe me.” A line of concern formed between her eyebrows and a frown folded the corners of her mouth. “I can see it in your face,” she looked up at him and shook her head. “My sweet boy,” she reached up a hand and touched his face. “I only ever wanted the world to be kind to you.” She swiped her thumb across his cheek. “I’m so sorry that it hasn’t been.”

He covered her hand with his, keeping contact longer, trying to fight the lump that had risen suddenly in his throat. “That’s not your fault, Ma.”

“No,” she shook her head again. “But I wish I could have shielded you better. And I wish you didn’t have to be so strong all the time. And I wish—” the last word came out as a tight whisper and Steve felt his heart clench as he watched her eyes fill with tears. “I wish I had more time to tell you how proud I am of you.” Her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Because I am, Steve. I’m so proud of you. And I’m so sorry I have to leave you again.”

“You don’t have to,” he said immediately, not caring that he sounded like a child again. A scared little boy, begging his mother to stay with him. “Please,” he asked as his own vision blurred. “Please don’t go.”

But Sarah only smiled sadly and folded her arms around him and pulled him down so he could hug her. He wrapped her in his arms and pressed his face to her hair and tried to hold on as long as possible. Wanting to commit the smell of her hair, the warmth of her hands, the careworn little lines on her face to his memory again. She smoothed his hair away from his ear and pulled back to press a kiss to his temple. “You be good,” she said softly, an echo of one of the last things she’d said to him before she’d died. “Be brave. Brave enough to live in the world you saved, Steve.” She pulled away and held his face again, pulling him down to press her forehead to his like she had so many times when they were the same height.

He felt her leave like a breath of air stolen from his lungs. Steve squeezed his eyes shut and let two tears fall and hit the tops of his shoes. He didn’t want to open them again and see that she’d gone. He didn’t want to have to be alone again.

Only he wasn’t alone.

When he straightened up and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, after he’d taken a few deep breaths and sniffed back the tears that wanted to keep coming, Steve turned around, hoping he was awake now. He wanted to be awake so he could go home and put this behind him and try to figure out what any of it was supposed to mean.

But as soon as he turned around, he realized how unlikely any of that was. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Not with Peggy Carter standing in front of him.

He blinked once. Twice. Three times. But she was still there. “Peggy?”

She smiled fondly and uncrossed her arms. Her high heels clicked on the sidewalk as she crossed the few feet to stand closer to him. “Hello, my darling,” she said. And then she raised a hand and slapped him across the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I feel that among the many mistakes Endgame made that not giving Steve the chance to remember and draw strength from the woman who raised him and shaped his entire life and made him Captain America LONG before anyone else was a big huge one? Yes, yes I do.
> 
> I don't know what Julie Benz' Irish accent is like, but she's who I've always pictured for Sarah Rogers so...enjoy my headcanons and please consider leaving me a bit of love? I kinda hurt my own feelers with this one.


	3. Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost of Christmas Present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a day early because I have to work way too much tomorrow and don't want to forget to post it. Enjoy! 
> 
> Warning: if you really loved how Peggy Carter was a silent, blithely smiling, trophy wife and nothing more in Endgame, then I think you're probably going to have a bad time in this chapter. However, if that's not something you were particularly into, feel free to read on and I hope you like what you find. <3

III _._

_It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older._

Steve pressed a hand to the stinging hand print she’d left on his cheek. “ _Ow_.”

“You’ll live,” Peggy said brusquely. “You’ve survived worse.”

“It still hurt,” he grumbled, no longer caring that he sounded petulant.

“It was supposed to,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest again. “I’m trying to penetrate that thick skull of yours. I wouldn’t even be here if you’d just listened to your mother like you were meant to.”

Steve frowned. “Listened to her about what? What am I supposed to be getting out of all this?” He stopped his questions when he realized that Peggy was studying him with a different look than before. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

She shook her head quickly. “It’s nothing,” she said before she frowned again. “It’s just that you look…terrible.”

Steve blinked. “Gee thanks, Peg,” he said dryly. “I’ve really missed you, too.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, at least sounding the part. “But I meant it. You really look—”

“Terrible,” he finished for her. “I know. I probably look like I’ve seen a ghost—lotta that going around tonight.” She opened her mouth to respond and then closed it again. Just like Wanda had done before he left the tower. Irritation twisted his stomach again and urged him to go on. “If that’s all that you’ve come to tell me then I’d rather just wake up now.”

“Don’t be silly,” she waved his words aside. “That knock on your head? You’re not waking up for quite a while. Which is good,” she went on before he had time to feel another twist of concern for his actual state. “Because apparently you’ve got miles to go.”

“Miles to go until what?” Steve demanded. “Until where? Where is it I’m supposed to arrive at the end of all this?”

“Can I ask you something?” she tilted her head to one side and ignored his questions.

He sighed. “Something tells me you’re going to anyway.”

“Who knows you’re here right now?”

“Uh…”

“No one?” she guessed. “Because no one cared or spoke to you on your way out? No one is hoping you’ll turn up anywhere special tonight instead of spending it alone, lying unconscious on the pavement in front of a house no one’s lived in for five years?”

He offered a tight, joyless smile. “Point taken, Peggy,” he said. “I should be home with my friends instead of out here by myself. I got it.”

“You absolutely have _not_ got it,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t be here if you did.”

He fought his eyes from rolling. “Okay,” he relented. “Fine. Impart your wisdom. Let’s hear it.”

She looked confused. “Why would I?” she asked as a line formed between her eyebrows. “You’ve never listened to me before. I have no reason to expect you’ll start now.”

“What are you talking about?” he countered. “I listen—"

Peggy interrupted him when her head dropped backward, and she groaned once before she straightened back up and held out her hand. “We truly don’t have time for this right now. Come along,” she beckoned.

“Where?” he asked, regarding her outstretched hand warily.

“You’re going home.”

He sighed. “But you said—”

“Don’t get excited,” Peggy shook her head. “I meant what I said,” she warned. “You’re not even close to finished with your evening.” Everything inside of Steve sank again. “Your mother wanted you to see what you’d missed when you were younger. I’m here to show you what you’re missing now. Tonight.” She beckoned again like she was waiting for a little boy.

Steve stepped toward her, not feeling like he had much of a choice. They’d walked a few steps in the opposite direction from which he’d first run before he shook his head. “You weren’t who I was expecting for the Ghost of Christmas Present. “

Peggy smiled as she took his arm and steered them north. “Titles are so formal, darling. ‘Peggy’ is just fine.”

Even though he knew they were going back to the tower, it filled him with dread all the same. That feeling only intensified when he realized she’d brought him to the hallway outside Bucky’s apartment.

Peggy stopped at the door—the one bizarrely festooned with the most hideous aluminum wreath Steve had ever seen. “Any idea what we're going to find on the other side of this door?”

Steve rubbed at the back of his neck. “Unless you knock first, probably a whole lot more of Bucky than you ever wanted to see.” He shook his head, trying to shake away the memory of the last time he’d walked in on him and Natasha going at it on the kitchen counter.

Peggy only smiled. “Good for them,” she said with an affirmative nod, even though Steve hadn’t shared that embarrassing story out loud. “And no,” she went on. “I’m nearly a hundred percent certain that everyone in this apartment is fully clothed for the moment.”

“For the moment,” Steve repeated skeptically.

“Yes, but the future is the great unknown, so let’s seize the moment, shall we?” Before he could object, Peggy turned the doorknob and beckoned him to follow her inside.

Where, Steve found, to his dismay, Darcy was sitting on the couch. She had pulled one foot beneath her and was sitting sideways with her hands wrapped around a large, steaming mug. Steve was struck by her hands for a moment and reminded of their first date. How he’d noticed her hands then too—short nails with dark blue polish; he’d fixated on that small detail of how she held her coffee cup before she pressed it to her lips. Like she was giving it hug. The way she closed her eyes and savored the first sip—like it was giving her one in return.

Bucky sat across from her, mirroring the level of comfort with which she’d settled into his living room. Steve frowned. He hadn’t realized they were this casually relaxed with one another. How long had that been the case?

“I really didn’t come here for the Bucky Soft Eyes routine,” Darcy was saying as Peggy closed the door behind them. Like before, no one noticed they were there. It was as if the door hadn’t moved at all.

“They’re free with the hot chocolate,” he watched Bucky shrug easily before he nodded in her direction. “Drink up. Then tell me what’s going on.”

Darcy took a sip and immediately began to cough. She put a hand to her chest and shook her head. “Jesus Christ, Buck…”

Bucky grinned. “Relax, it’s just a little nip.”

She coughed again and Steve glanced toward the kitchen where the open bottle of peppermint Schnapps was still sitting on the counter. “Just wasn’t expecting it,” she recovered with a smile as she took another, more cautious sip.

Her companion raised his eyebrows. “So come on,” he urged once he was sure she wasn’t going to cough again. “How come you’re here instead of upstairs, being the best thing to ever happen to that sad sack?”

Darcy’s smile faded and she glanced down at the empty couch cushion between them. “He called me Peggy.”

“He did _what_?” Before Steve even had the chance to avert his eyes from Peggy’s curious gaze or the scene before them, Natasha’s head had appeared around the corner that led down the hallway.

“When?” Bucky asked, more gently as Natasha stopped whatever she’d been doing in the hallway closet and perched lightly on the back of the closest armchair.

Darcy let out a long breath and pushed her nails through her hair, away from her face. “Just…like…I don’t know, when I went to see him when I got home,” she checked her phone. “Two? Three hours ago?”

“Hours?” Steve repeated, turning to Peggy. “It hasn’t been hours, has it?”

She frowned. “I’m afraid so.”

“What was the context?” Bucky looked as though he was turning something over in his mind as he asked.

Natasha scoffed and shot him a glare. “Why does that matter?”

Bucky turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Well, I mean, it’s not _good_ no matter what, but depending on what was going on…”

Darcy held up a hand and shook her head. “We weren’t—” She stopped and started again. “We were arguing. Or. Well,” her lips pouted, and she wrinkled her nose. “Not arguing. About to argue. I think. I don’t know. I left before he could do anymore damage.” She looked from Bucky to Natasha and back again. “Look, if he’d called me Peggy while we were having sex I wouldn’t be here. I would have just lit myself on fire.”

“So would I,” Steve muttered, shaking his head as the remorse and embarrassment from before came racing back.

“Yes, that would be the appropriate response,” Peggy said evenly, her arms crossed over her chest. “From you,” she added. “Not her. She doesn’t deserve that.”

Natasha had stood again and grabbed a duffle bag that had been stashed beside the coffee table. Bucky frowned. “What are you looking for?” he asked, after she’d dug through it for a minute.

“My garrote,” she said, without looking up.

“Natalia—” Bucky stood up at the same time as Darcy dropped her head into her hands.

“I’m not going to _kill_ him,” Nat insisted as Bucky took the bag and placed it back on the ground. “Most likely.”

“I’m pretty sure he’d thank you if you did,” Darcy said morosely from her place on the couch. “He looked like he wanted to die as soon as he said it.” Her lips dropped again. “Although, I can’t remember the last time he _didn’t_ look like that,” she realized aloud. “At least a little bit.”

Steve dropped his eyes. He thought he’d been hiding it a little better than that. How useless he felt. How restless. How chasing these handfuls of miscreants around the world was the only thing that felt like normal—and how frequently he thought about the possibility of someone getting off a lucky shot someday. Put a period on the end of this sentence. Finish what should have happened eighty years ago.

He could feel Peggy’s eyes on him as he watched Bucky sit back down beside Darcy. “You know none a’ that’s got anything to do with you, right?”

“Logically?” Darcy asked. “Yeah. I know that. Unfortunately, the rest of me is sticky and mushy and illogical and not necessarily agreeing.”

Bucky pursed his lips and waited until Darcy had sipped at her spiked hot chocolate before he shook his head. “Listen, the way he’s been lately—that’s not really him. I don’t know what all’s going on in his head anymore but he’s not…” He paused and seemed to rethink his next words. “I understand if you don’t want to give him another chance,” he said quietly. “But there’s a really good guy still buried in there somewhere.” His half-smile was just on the side of sad and Steve felt another rush of regret for how he’d been ignoring Bucky’s calls and texts lately.

Darcy pulled her thumb up to her mouth and chewed on the corner of the nail. “I know,” she nodded before she leaned back into the couch cushions. “I’m not a _complete_ masochist. If he’d been like this the whole time I’d known him this wouldn’t be an issue. I wouldn’t have fall—” Across the room, Natasha perked up at the same time Steve did. He held his breath, waiting for her to finish her sentence. But she didn’t. Her tongue stopped in the middle of the word, pressed the roof of her mouth for a long moment before she pressed her lips together again and shook her head. “I can’t be a poor-man’s Peggy, ya know?”

“You’re not,” Steve said softly, forgetting she couldn’t hear him or feel him when he reached a hand for her shoulder. “You’re so much—” The words died on his tongue as his hand passed through her like water.

“I’m sorry, but you know she won’t feel that,” Peggy said quietly from his side. “We’re not really here, Steve.”

“But she has to know I don’t really think she’s—” he cut himself off with a heavy exhale. “Right? I mean, she can’t think—”

Peggy looked a little sadder as she moved a shoulder in a slow shrug. “It rather appears that she does, I’m afraid.”

He ran a hand over his face as the living room around them faded slowly, softening like an old memory before it dissolved and left them back in the hallway. “Let me wake up,” he said urgently. “I can tell her she’s wrong. I’ll come back and make it up to her and—” he let out a flustered exhale. “I want this to be over,” he said firmly. “I’ve learned my lesson, alright?”

But his companion only shook her head. “Only you really haven’t,” she said with a thoughtful frown. “And as for when you’re allowed to wake up, that’s not really up to me.”

“No,” Steve sighed, his shoulders dropped. “Of course, it isn’t.”

Peggy let a moment of tense silence pass between them before she spoke again. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Sure,” he said listlessly.

“Why did you call her by my name? Was it really because you were wishing she was me?”

Steve looked down for a moment, relieved he didn’t have to try to lie. “No.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was…it was something she said. I had a—a memory that I couldn’t—it’s complicated,” he rubbed the back of his neck, trying not to fidget. “It’s…confusing, sometimes. Telling the difference between what’s happening now and what’s a memory.”

Peggy nodded slowly. “I see. And you—you’ve explained this problem you’re having to Darcy? So, she’d know it wasn’t _actually_ what she thought it was—you slipping up like that?”

“No.”

“No,” Peggy repeated with another nod. “So, she has no idea this is something you’re going through,” she assessed before she carried on. “Well that’s understandable. Relatively new relationship and all that. But at least she’s talking to people who would understand—your closest friends, they’ll be able to explain it to her. Because you’ve at least told _them_ that you’re having this problem.”

He sighed, rubbing at his temples with one hand. “No. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Steve, these flashbacks—”

“They’re not—”

“ _Yes,_ they are,” she insisted firmly. “They’re a symptom of trauma. Post Traumatic Stress. You’ve heard of it, yes?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I certainly hope so; you might as well be the poster boy. Everything you’ve been going through—the sleeplessness, the isolation, the paranoia, the anxiety and _yes,_ the flashbacks and the problems distinguishing between the present and the past, they’re all a perfectly normal response to the kind of trauma you’ve experienced.”

“It’s not that bad,” he said stubbornly.

“No,” she countered immediately. “It _is_ that bad. You’ve only been telling yourself otherwise because you’re afraid.”

He rolled his eyes. “Afraid of what?”

“How should I know?” Peggy asked. “You tell me. This is _your_ hallucination we’re in, not mine.”

“This is ridiculous,” he said finally, feeling fed up. “What’s the point in showing me all this if I can’t change or fix any of it? All you’re doing is proving my point.”

“And what point is that, exactly?”

“That I don’t belong here anymore,” he exclaimed. “That no one here is better off with me around. And if that’s the case then I should have stayed…” he faltered and dropped his hand.

Peggy raised her eyebrows. “Stayed where, exactly?”

“With you. When I used the time stone and went back—I should have just stayed with you.”

She blinked and seemed to stand up straighter than before. “And who’s to say I would have let you?” she asked after what felt like a long moment had passed.

He looked up from where his gaze had fallen to the floor. “What?”

“Steve, I was grateful for what time I got to spend with you—and getting to see you again felt like a beautiful dream, but you were never meant to stay with me.” Her expression hardened as she continued. “I don’t know what you think you were going to do, but if you had stayed you would have rewritten my life—do you realize that? _My_ life, Steve,” she repeated. “My choices. My family. Mine. Not yours.”

“Peggy if I’d—”

“If you had stayed you would have thrown away everything you worked for here,” she said firmly. “You made such a difference in so many lives—you have friends here. Family. People who love you. Why would you want to give that up to hide in a past where you didn’t belong either?” When he found he had no immediate answer for that, she went on. “For me? For a woman you barely knew? Steve,” she shook her head. “I hate to have to break this to you, but you weren’t the love of my life. Maybe I thought you were when I was twenty-two, but that image of you I held onto—that wasn’t real. I had a whole life without you—a real life. With a husband I loved and children and a family and a career that had nothing to do with you and you _know that._ You knew that the whole time and for you to say you wanted to go back and erase all of it? To take away my choice to have all that because you think I’m some prize you deserved to win?” She looked worse than angry, he realized. She looked hurt. She shook her head again. “Shame on you.”

He opened his mouth to respond. To tell her she had him all wrong. To explain that it wasn’t as selfish a wish as she’d made it sound—but nothing came out. There was nothing he could say that would convey any of that.

Because she was right. Again.

They stared at one another for a long moment before Steve blinked and felt his face furrow in confusion. Peggy’s hair was different. Silver and shorter than it had been, just a minute ago. Her skin had softened and folded with lines of age, evidence of a lifetime of smiles around her eyes and mouth. She looked smaller suddenly. More fragile. Older. Much, much older. She looked like she had the last time he’d seen her in the hospital. He blinked again, telling himself he was seeing things. This wasn’t the woman he’d been talking to, fighting with, just a moments before…and yet he couldn’t pinpoint when she could have changed. He’d been looking right at her the whole time.

“Took you long enough,” she said finally. Her stance had softened a tiny bit. She didn’t look quite so ready to hit him again. Which, he had to guess that, even in her older state, would still hurt like hell. “I was beginning to think you’d never really look at me.”

“Peggy, you—”

“I got old, Steve,” she said with a soft, sad smile. “I didn't stay twenty years old forever like that picture in your damn compass. I lived a beautiful life and I got old and I died. And that’s my whole story. It’s written and done, and I wouldn’t change a single line of it for anyone—not even you. Do you understand?”

Another long silence grew thick between them until he managed to speak again. “So what now?” he asked, in lieu of an apology. Because there was no way to apologize for nearly rewriting her entire life. For telling her he wished he had undone everything she’d ever done for herself. He knew that. And so did she. “What do I do?”

She offered another small smile. Still a little sad, a little encouraging. “I think you keep going.”

As soon as she said it, the world shifted around them. Instead of the hallway outside of Bucky’s apartment, they were in a kitchen. Sam’s kitchen, Steve realized with a sigh. Another snapshot of a friend he kept disappointing. Despite his evening, Steve couldn’t help the little smile that came to his face at the sight of Sam’s mother, Darlene, at the stove—pleasantly chubby in a bright green sweater and red and white holiday-patterned leggings, dancing and singing along to the Christmas song on the radio. She had wrapped her hair in a silk scarf and was tending to saucepans on all four burners, seemingly all at once.

“Sam,” she called over her shoulder while she cracked salt and pepper into a simmering pot of black-eyed peas. “Baby, what’s the final headcount for dinner?”

Confused as to why Peggy had brought him here, Steve watched as Sam, dressed in a truly hideous Christmas sweater, danced into the kitchen and planted a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “I didn’t hear you, Mama. What’s up?”

“How many people are you setting the table for?”

“Whole family,” he said leaning over her to swipe a dollop of cornbread batter from the side of the bowl on the counter. “Twenty-three.”

A brief look of concern crossed Darlene’s features as she turned from the stove and faced her son with a single raised eyebrow. “How many?”

“Twenty-three,” Sam said again.

She cleared her throat until he looked up from the food he was sampling and narrowed her eyes. “ _How_ many?”

Steve looked on, still confused, as Sam sighed and shook his head. “Mama, I told you, he’s not coming.”

Darlene pursed her lips. “Does he know it’s Christmas Eve?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Does he know I’m cooking?”

“I told him.”

“Well then you didn’t tell him right,” Darlene turned back to the stove, shaking her head. “Call him again.”

“Mama—”

“Samuel Thomas Wilson, this is non-negotiable,” she held up a hand and pointed at him. “Whatever beef is between the two of you, you’d better fry it up and eat it because I’m not serving it at my table.”

“There’s no beef,” Sam argued weakly. “We just…” he shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Ma. We’ve just drifted a lot lately.”

Darlene stopped stirring and turned back to her son. She offered a more sympathetic smile. “Well then it’s a good thing it’s Christmas,” she said softly. “It’s easier to come together with the people you love at Christmas. Even if it’s been awhile.” She reached out and patted his cheek. “Call him again.”

Sam sighed again and closed his eyes for a long moment. “Yes ma’am,” he said and leaned down to kiss her cheek again.

“And don’t you roll your eyes at me again, young man,” she called after him as he retreated from the kitchen. “I don’t give a damn if you're Captain America or not—that shield ain’t gonna save you from the back of my hand.”

He was still chuckling to himself when Steve followed him into the living room. A huge table had been set up that stretched from the dining room into the living room. The couches and armchairs had been pushed away to make room for the folding chairs at each plate. He knew Sam had offered the community kitchen and area to his mother for her cook, but Steve could see why she’d refused. It would be more cramped to have everyone here in Sam’s apartment. But it would be cozier, too. It would feel more like a family dinner. He almost wished he wouldn’t have to miss it.

Sam pulled his phone from his pocket and swiped his thumb over the screen a few times before he held it to his ear. Out of habit, Steve reached for his own pocket, expecting a buzz or a ring.

“You left it at home,” Peggy reminded, appearing suddenly at his side. “On the counter.”

Even though he knew he couldn’t have answered it—probably _wouldn’t_ have answered it—Steve felt strangely disappointed as he watched Sam wait through the few rings it took to reach his voicemail. He heard his own voice through the phone and a beep and watched as Sam swallowed once and cleared his throat. “Hey man, it’s me. Uh, Sam.” Sam winced at the greeting at the same time Steve did. How had they grown so uncomfortable with each other? “Listen, I know you told me you’re not interested but…” he fidgeted nervously. “But um. It’s Christmas, man. You shouldn’t spend it alone. We uh—” he coughed again. “We all miss you, Steve.” He paused and seemed to debate his next words before he shook his head. “I miss you.” There was another beat before Sam cleared his throat a third time and rushed on, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. “Anyway, dinner’s at eight. Mom’s goin’ nuts with all her specialties so when you show up, make sure you prepare your white boy taste buds for some real food. I’ll uh—I’ll see you.”

Steve felt an expected sting of emotion behind his nose and eyes. He missed Sam too. He’d been telling himself he hadn’t—that it was good that Sam was staying so busy and good that he didn’t need him anymore. But it wasn’t good, he realized. Not if it meant the two of them growing so far apart so fast that a simple phone call felt so foreign and awkward.

Sam had been the first person who had wanted to be his friend— _his_ friend, Steve’s friend, not Captain America’s—in what had felt like forever. He’d been there, unflinching, unwavering, every single time Steve had needed him since the first time they’d shaken hands that day on the mall. He’d quit his job, he’d become a fugitive, he’d risked his life a million times for Steve and had never once asked for anything in return.

And for what? For Steve to drop the shield at his feet and say, ' _B_ _est of luck; this is your headache now'_?

He turned to ask Peggy to let him wake up now, to tell her he really had learned enough, seen enough, and he was ready for this to be over, but the sight of Wanda standing in the doorway derailed his thoughts. She looked nervous as she pushed her hair back and absently spun her thumb ring. “What’s wrong?” Steve asked, surprised to hear Sam match his question in unison.

Wanda bit her lip briefly and stood up from where she’d leaned against the doorway. “It’s…um. It’s Steve,” she said, taking a few steps into the room. “I’m worried about him.”

“Don’t be,” Steve said aloud, despite knowing she couldn’t hear him.

“Something happen?” Sam asked, crossing to meet her in the middle of the room.

“I didn’t mean to,” she started with a quick glance down. “I was in the kitchen, downstairs, and he came in—he and Darcy had a fight,” she added quickly. “And he didn’t know I was there and I…” she huffed out a frustrated breath. “I read him,” she admitted. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I wasn’t expecting him to come in and everything about him was so loud and so angry I couldn’t help it.”

“Okay…” Sam said, nodding for her to go on. “What did you see? Why are you worried?”

“His thoughts were all over the place,” her hand fluttered near her temple for a moment. “Scattered and anxious and the only thing I could focus on was that he’s looking for someone named Daken. I think he’s been tracking him for the last month or so but, Sam,” her eyebrows dipped together in distress. “If it’s the Daken I think it is—Strucker used to contract with him.”

Realization dawned in Sam’s eyes. “Shit.”

Wanda put her hand on Sam’s arm. “He’s a _very bad guy,_ ” she said emphatically. “And all I could get from Steve is that he got a good lead on where Daken might be, and he was leaving as soon as he could.” She curled and uncurled her fists, little crimson sparks cracked at her knuckles. “And now nobody knows where he is and what if he went off alone—”

Sam took her gently by the arms and looked her squarely in the eyes. “We’ll find him,” he said firmly. “Okay? We’ll find him and we’ll beat his ass until he tells us what’s been going on and then we’ll all handle whatever it is together.”

Steve was grateful that Sam had managed to pull a small smile from Wanda as she nodded, looking relieved. He still felt helpless and guilty as he watched Sam retrieve his phone from his pocket again. “Guys, I’m fine,” he said, wondering if he willed it hard enough that one of them could hear him. Wanda at least, with all her power and the magic that flowed through her veins. If anyone could hear him, it would be her. “Wanda, I’m okay—I’m not going to—”

But the room faded quickly, taking Wanda and Sam with it. He looked around in surprise. They were back on the street. The place where he’d fallen. Where this nightmare had started. “Okay, you really need to let me wake up now,” he demanded, turning back to face Peggy. “I’ve gotta stop all this and not ruin anyone else’s night.”

Peggy crossed her arms again and frowned. “Ruin their night?” she repeated. “Is that what you think they’re worried about? That Christmas dinner will have to be pushed back?” She scoffed. “Steve, they’re worried you might be _dead_ right now. If they’re going to look for you it’s because they love you—no matter what you’ve done or how cold you’ve been. That’s what family _is_ , you daft moron.”

His hands balled into fists of frustration. “Goddamnit, Peggy, I don’t want to _do_ this anymore,” he insisted. “I don’t want to keep wandering around the city watching how badly I’m fucking up and disappointing everyone around me. I just want to wake up and be _done_ with this fucking nightmare since no one wants to tell me what I’m supposed to do with all this.”

“I’ve told you what you’re supposed to do,” she said, dropping her arms from her chest, looking suddenly much less combative. She took a few steps toward him. “You’re supposed to keep going.”

Steve felt the fire fade from his throat and the desire to argue and fight slowly fade away. He dropped his head and closed his eyes. “I’m tired, Peggy.”

She reached out and closed her fingers around his. Her hands were softer than he remembered. Her skin was thin, like tissue paper. “I know you are,” she said softly. “But if you really want to rest, you’re going to have to stop fighting.” She ducked her head, forcing him to meet her eyes.

“I don’t know how,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.

Her hand tightened around his and she placed the other on his cheek. “I told you once that you wouldn’t be alone,” she said, raising his chin, keeping his gaze with hers. “I meant it then and I mean it now, Steve. You’re not alone. You never have been—not for a moment.”

He swallowed hard and made himself nod, telling himself he could believe her someday. “Is this where you tell me you’re leaving?”

She smiled and her eyes grew bright and glassy for a moment before she blinked quickly clearing any trace of tears away. “I’m afraid it so,” she squeezed his hand. “But it was nice to see you again, my darling.”

Peggy patted his cheek once more and that was it. She was gone in an instant, quicker than a blink. Like she’d never even been there at all.

Only she must have been there, because Steve could feel her absence stinging at his heart. He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping this was it. That he could wake up now. That he could go and fix everything he’d ruined in the last few months. That the ache in his chest that he had learned to live with would fade back to its manageable twinge by the morning. 

He shook his head and forced himself to exhale. But when he opened his eyes, he was still standing upright, still in the pool of light from the streetlamp, and still not awake.

And someone new was waiting.


	4. Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost of Christmas Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, friendships, this is the chapter where I really earn the "angst" half of my "angst with a happy ending" tag. This was hard to write and took a little longer than I was expecting. 
> 
> **Also, it's so fun that so many people had guesses about who our mystery third ghost was going to be! I loved hearing everyone's suggestions (I know you all wanted it to be Tony) but in all the versions I've seen or read of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Future represents an unknown. In most cases, it's death--the ultimate unknown--and while I didn't go down that particular road, I wanted to stay faithful to the idea of the unknown and this ghost being more a specter of possibility than a visitor from Steve's past. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

IV. 

_`Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,' said Scrooge, `answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only.'_

She was young. Just a kid, he realized with confusion. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, with light brown hair that fell in long, messy curls beneath a knit beanie and a shy, hesitant smile. “Uh, hi,” she said, raising a hand in greeting.

Despite his confusion, Steve huffed out a quiet laugh and raised his own hand. “Hi,” he echoed, uncertainly. “Ghost of Christmas Future, I presume?”

“Oh, um,” she frowned in thought. “Yeah. I guess so.” She took a few steps toward him and he couldn’t help but feel like there was something familiar about her. Her eyes were blue, set in a round face with rosy cheeks —nothing he outright recognized. His mind flipped quickly through a lifetime of names and faces, trying to place her but there was nothing. Nothing but the feeling that he _should_ know her. And he didn’t. She tugged her hat down lower over her ears. “You can call me that,” she decided out loud. “Sure.”

“Do you…have another name I could call you?” he asked slowly, watching as she twirled the end of a lock of her hair, seeming to be trying her hardest not to fidget.

Her lips dipped again and again, Steve was reminded of something. Someone. But her expression shifted again and anything he could pinpoint vanished from his memory. “I don’t actually think I’m allowed to tell you that.”

“Of course not,” Steve said easily. “Where’s the fun in that.”

“Sorry,” she pulled a quick grimace. “I don’t make the rules.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Well, when I wake up, I’m going to have a strongly worded email for whoever does.”

His companion giggled like he’d said something funny and then cleared her throat. “We should probably go,” she said, jerking her head behind her. “There’s just a couple things I have to show you.”

Steve nodded and motioned for her to go ahead. “Lead the way.” They fell into step together and had made it to the end of the block before he realized she was watching him from the corner of her eye. “Can I help you?” he asked finally, glancing in her direction. She was biting back a smile and shook her head. He should have been annoyed, he realized, more frustrated, but there was something about her that pulled a half-smile to the corner of his mouth. “Something funny?”

She shook her head. “Uh, no, sorry,” she stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I guess I just didn’t realize how young you’d be.”

Steve scoffed. “I’m not, really. I’m—”

“I know,” she cut him off. “I know you’re not _young_ young. But you’re young to me.”

He stopped walking. “I’m sorry,” he turned to face her. “Do we know each other?”

She stopped too and tilted her head to one side. Her nose wrinkled in thought. “What year is this? 202…3?”

“Yeah…”

“Then no,” she shook her head. “You don’t know me.”

“But you know me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I know a version of you,” she said, motioning with her head again for them to keep walking.

“Which version?”

“Well…” she let the word hang for almost too long. “That’s sort of up for debate.” He opened his mouth to tell her that she wasn’t making any sense, but she rushed on. “I know, I know. Way too vague. But there’s a ton of rules about everything that’s going on and the less I tell you about _me_ the less likely I am to break them, okay?”

Steve was tired. He was frustrated and confused and more than anything, he just wanted to wake up and be done with all of this. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Sure.”

He didn’t know why he was agreeing to her terms, aside from the suspicion that he didn’t really have a choice. But it was something else, too. Something about the way she spoke and fidgeted and made faces at the things coming out of her own mouth that had him going along without too much pushback. Something about her that made him want to protect her—make things as easy as possible for her—wrapped around a distinct fondness he couldn’t explain.

Her breath clouded in front of her face as she let out a little sigh of relief. “Thanks.” The silence that slipped in between them and walked the next few yards wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but his companion seemed to feel the need to break it anyway. “Having a rough night, huh?”

At this, Steve had to laugh. It wasn’t quite a genuine laugh—no real happiness left for the evening, if he’d had any to start with—but it felt like a release anyway. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. But at least it’s almost over, right?” he glanced sideways at her. “You’re my last ghost, aren’t you?”

She looked up with wide blue eyes and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, I know I’m a last resort,” she said and immediately frowned. “Which, like, way to make a girl feel special.”

He felt himself smile again. “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, not sure why he felt the need to make this girl feel better, “you're not who I was expecting.”

Her frown only deepened and again, Steve could have sworn he recognized her. “That…doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I just mean,” he shook his head. “I was expecting someone else and, honestly, I’m glad it’s not him—”

“Who were you expecting?” she asked, interrupting him with a curious tilt of her head. “Could be anyone, I guess,” she said, answering her own question before he could say _Tony_. “You’ve got _tons_ of dead people.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway,” she went on, either missing the dryness in his response or choosing to ignore it, “whoever you were expecting… they’d be from your past. They can’t help you now.”

“And you can, huh?” he asked, not quite believing it as he caught her elbow to keep her from face-planting when she stumbled over an uneven spot in the pavement. “Careful.”

“Good save,” she said, righting herself with another smile, and pointed to a building across the street. “We’re going that-a-way.”

There was nothing special about the building on the outside. He waited while his guide seemed to be choosing between four identical doors before she finally selected the second from the last in the row. She held it open and motioned for him to go inside. Hesitantly, and dreading what she had to show him with each step, he did as she asked.

The door swung shut as the scene materialized around them. She’d brought them to a huge room, bright and cheerful and bustling with life and energy. More than a dozen round tables, each set for ten, filled the space with people. Eating, talking and laughing, dressed in holiday attire. There were colorful lights and glittery decorations and the hint of rich, savory smells still lingering from dinner. Across the room, Steve could see a dance floor with people moving to whatever Jingle Bell medley the band was playing from where they’d set up in the far corner.

“What is this?” he asked as his third ghost returned to his side.

She pulled off her hat and raked a hand through her hair. “Christmas party,” she said with a shrug. “For anyone who needs a hot meal and a nice night for a change.” Steve blinked and focused on the table closest to him. The people weren’t quite as polished and shiny as he’d thought they were a moment before. Thin clothes, scraggly beards and untrimmed hair, clean hands with dirty fingernails. “Started out as just a free dinner,” she went on, unbuttoning her wool coat. “A lot of people from the shelters in the neighborhood and the refugee centers, but there are a lot of vets that come with their families, too. It gets bigger every year,” she smiled and fluffed her hair again. “Thankfully, there are more volunteers and donors every year too.”

She started walking towards the opposite end of the space and Steve hurried to keep up as they made their way past tables of people in various stages of a turkey dinner. Smiles. Full bellies. People feeling safe and warm and together. He was stuck between wanting to stop and take it in, and hardly being able to look at it for the way it made his chest hurt and brought a rush of sentiment to his throat.

“Who puts this on?” he asked, catching up with her. “What foundation?” He had scanned the room looking for branding, for a name he recognized.

“No foundation,” she said, shaking her head and pushed open a swinging door to an industrial kitchen. “Just some really good people.” She stopped and stood off to the side, motioning for him to stand with her. Steve watched her smile before he followed her eyes and felt his heart stutter when they landed on Darcy.

“If you want to grab about five or six other guys and start clearing empty plates,” she was saying to a duo of teenaged boys wearing t-shirts with the word _volunteer_ stamped on the back. “That’d be really helpful. Oh,” she stopped them before they had fully turned around. “But if someone isn’t done or they seem like they want more, just let them know we have plenty of food, okay? They can have as much as they want. We’re not rushing anybody.” She pushed back her hair—a little shorter than he had just seen it, but still long and dark and falling down her back in waves—and swiped at her forehead with the back of her hand. Steve felt himself smile as the room cleared and she leaned against the nearest counter. She looked a little tired and a little overwhelmed, and happy, he realized. Really, really happy. Sparkling eyes, blush on her cheeks, and the kind of light that made him wish he could cross the room and touch her. Talk to her. Kiss her and hope she’d share that light with him.

“Darcy did all this?” he asked his companion, forcing himself to look away.

The girl’s shoulder moved in a shrug as she looked back at Steve. “She has help. And it wasn’t just her idea.”

“Whose idea—” Steve cut himself at the sight of the next person to walk through the swinging doors.

“Yours,” his guide said simply as Steve watched yet another version of himself cross his path. “Yours and Bucky’s,” she added. “Sam started soliciting the donations for all the presents a few years ago,” she grinned as if remembering something particularly good. “Turns out nobody wants to say no to Captain America at Christmastime.”

Steve was only paying half attention as he studied this future version of himself. He seemed different. He didn’t look any different, he noted, except that his beard was shorter—better trimmed, at least—and he looked like he’d been taking better care of himself. No dark circles under this Steve’s eyes. No grim glower permanently set across his features. He looked… good, he decided. Healthy. But there was something unfamiliar about his future self. Something the present Steve couldn’t put his finger on.

“Happiness,” his guide said, interrupting his thoughts. “You probably don’t recognize what it looks like when you feel it—because you never let yourself for more than ten minutes at a time,” she added, almost under her breath. “But yeah, that’s what Steve Rogers looks like when he’s happy and healthy and—” she paused and smiled again as she watched Steve—the _other_ Steve—step up behind Darcy and wrap his arms around her waist. “In love,” she finished softly.

If he didn’t know better, he would have said his ghostly companion looked almost nostalgic as they watched his future self pull Darcy’s hair to one side so he could kiss her temple while she leaned against him with a tired smile and a hum of contentment.

He felt his heart twist again and a bizarre sense of jealousy toward the version of himself that was holding her so tightly, whose attention had put that smile on her face.

Darcy tapped his arm after a long moment and giggled when he tightened his hold on her as she tried to break free. “Steeeeve,” she whined lightly. “I have to go make sure all the presents are—”

He kissed her temple again. “They are,” he said. “I just came from there. Everything’s good to go.”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Everything?”

“I’ve got Santa Sam and Natasha the Christmas Lunatic on it,” Steve watched his other self say easily with a smile. “Presents are completely handled.” He let go of her to turn her gently to face him all the way and took hold of one of her hands while his other went to her waist. “Give me five minutes.”

“Five minutes, huh?” Darcy looked up at him with a grin. “Isn’t that just what every girl wants to hear.”

To his right, he heard the younger girl giggle and felt unable to help the half-smile that tugged at his own lips. That was exactly the kind of thing Darcy would say. It wasn’t until he watched her lace her fingers with his that he caught the glint of a diamond ring on her left hand. The silver band beneath it. The matching silver ring on the left hand of his future self.

“Stop running around for five minutes and dance with your husband,” Steve heard his other self say. It sounded so natural coming from him. So normal and pedestrian. This whole thing seemed to come easily to him—so easily that Steve had to wonder if he wasn’t being shown, not just a possible future, but one from an alternate timeline.

A timeline where he hadn’t messed things up so completely with Darcy.

“Anyway, they’re playing our song.”

Darcy snorted. “Jingle Bell Rock is _not_ our song,” she insisted, even as her feet moved and her hips swayed in time with his.

“It could be,” he countered, not missing a beat. “We don’t have a song.”

“Yeah, whose fault is that?” she asked, still smiling.

“Yours, I believe.”

She scoffed. “Not true at all!” she exclaimed around another laugh. “I had plenty of suggestions. You just didn’t like any of them.”

“Plenty of bad suggestions…”

“Do for Love by Tupac Shakur is a timeless romantic classic and it’s _not_ my fault that you don’t appreciate the genius of his poetry,” Darcy said, sounding like this was an argument they’d been having for quite some time. “Same thing with Lady Strange by Def Leppard.”

Steve watched himself smirk down at her. “Has anyone ever told you that you have terrible taste in music?”

“Literally no one,” she answered smoothly before she stretched up on her toes and brushed her lips with his. “My taste in men, however—” she pulled away before he could kiss her again. “Hey, wasn’t Tali with you?”

“Tali?” Steve repeated at the same time as his counterpart.

“Natalia,” his companion added with a smile. “But Tali’s easier for a three year-old to pronounce.”

“Little human we created?” Darcy was asking as she dropped her hand to tap the middle of her thigh. “About yay big? Blue eyes, shoes probably on the wrong feet? Ringing any bells?”

More certain than before that he’d been brought to an alternate universe, Steve caught the giggle from his third ghost as his other self pretended to remember. “Oh, right right right,” he nodded. “Yeah, I gave her away.”

“Oh,” Darcy shrugged. “Alright. Nice family, at least?”

“I don’t know,” Steve mirrored her shrug, “I wasn’t really paying attention.” He waited until she snorted again and shook her head before he kissed her a second time. "She’s with Bucky.”

“Naturally,” Darcy smiled before she glanced over her husband’s shoulder and brightened further. “Speaking of.”

Too easy, Steve told himself as Bucky appeared with a little girl on his hip, hanging off his neck like a monkey. Way too easy. There was no way these could be the same Darcy and Bucky he knew. The ones he’d pushed away.

“Mommy, I ate free cookies!” The little girl—Natalia, Steve reminded himself—reached for Darcy as she held up three fingers. She had thick, dark blonde hair that had been pulled back and away from her face. Chubby cheeks and blue eyes and a big, bright smile that she must have gotten from Darcy. Though Steve had a feeling if he looked closely, she would have been a mix of them both.

The idea twisted around another stab of regret. He didn’t want to look closely.

Bucky passed her off easily as Darcy stepped back far enough from Steve to fit Natalia between them. “You did?” she asked, tapping her forehead to her daughter’s.

“Uh huh. I ate free, ‘cause _I’m_ free,” she said with absolute certainty that this was the correct reason to do anything.

“And she’d stuffed three in her mouth before Auntie Wanda caught her raiding the cookie table,” Bucky added before he grimaced. “Sorry about the sugar rush.”

“There was no way she was going to bed on time tonight anyway,” the other Steve said with a shrug. “We’ll live.”

“Oh, speaking of time,” Darcy shifted Natalia to one hip to squint at her watch. “I need to get back out there.”

“I come too!” Tali said, pumping a little fist in air.

Despite that this was not _his_ future—that this could _never_ be his future—Steve smiled and felt an unfamiliar pull at his heart. “You come too,” his other self said fondly as he took her from Darcy’s arms. “But let’s give Mommy’s back a break, kiddo.”

Steve turned back to his ghost as the four of them made their way back out to the party. “What universe is this from?” he asked when the swinging door had stopped moving. “What timeline?”

The girl’s features wrinkled in confusion. “What do you mean? It’s… _this_ universe,” she said uncertainly. “Our— _your_ timeline. There aren’t any alternate universes,” she went on. “Or, if there are, I definitely can’t take you there.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not right. There’s no way that guy who just walked out of here—” he pointed after his future self. “There’s no way that’s me.”

“But it _is_ you,” she insisted. “Or, it could be. That guy made all your same mistakes…he just learned from them before it was too late. He asked for help and he stopped being afraid of what he was feeling—”

“I’m not afraid of—”

“Yes, you are,” she said, cutting off whatever lie he was about to sputter indignantly. “You’ve been keeping Darcy at arm’s length because you’re afraid of what would happen if you get too close. But all that’s going to happen is that you’d get to be in love with someone who loves you back.”

“She won’t—"

“She does,” she cut him off again. “And this guy,” she pointed in the direction where his other self had gone, “he didn’t think she would either but she did. And so did Bucky and Sam and Wanda—even after everything—”

“I don’t think you understand how badly I’ve screwed up,” he said, cutting off whatever she was about to say.

She was quiet for a moment while he leaned against the nearest counter, feeling more tired than ever. He looked up to see her purse her lips before she took a step toward him and placed her hands on his shoulders. For a moment, he thought she was going to touch her forehead to his the way Darcy had just done with Natalia. The way his mother used to do with him. But she didn’t, and Steve wondered why he felt disappointed. “You just forgot who you are,” she said softly.

“Then remind me,” he demanded, forcing himself not to lose his temper with her the way he had with Peggy. The way he did with everyone else.

“Oh no,” she shook her head. “That’s for you to figure out.” She let her arms drop as he sighed and looked down, pinching the bridge of his nose, hoping to ward off a migraine. “I can tell you who you were,” she said, moving to stand next to him and lean against the same counter. “And who I know you can be again.” He glanced over, curious, and she continued. “A guy who always stood up for what was right. Who never gave up, not for a second. Even when everyone was against him. Even when he was miserable, which, from what I hear, was like, fifty percent of the time,” she glanced over with a rueful smile before she softened. “He did _good.”_ She smiled almost to herself. “And that gave him something. A light… a spark of something better.” She looked at him again. “Something that made everyone else try harder and fight harder and _want_ and _try_ to be better than they were.”

He was close enough to see that she believed everything she was saying. That she had absolute faith in the version of him she knew. He swallowed hard and forced himself to ask his next question. “Who told you all that?”

She smiled softly and her teeth pressed into her bottom lip for just a second. “Nobody had to tell me. I got to see it for myself. But my mom filled me in on the parts I missed,” she said quietly. “She has a way of seeing the good in people. Especially you.” Before he could make her tell him who she really was, confirm the suspicion behind everything he’d felt since he met her, she continued. “That man she sees? The one she told me about? The one _I know?_ You think you’ve lost that, but you haven’t. You think that because there’s no army to lead or war to fight, that people don’t still need that, but they _do._ ”

He closed his eyes and looked away, forcing down a sudden rush of emotion that had risen in his chest. “Why this?” he asked finally after he ran another hand over his face. He pushed away from the counter and stood to face her again. “Why this future? Why did you bring me here?”

She blinked and looked confused for a moment before she cleared her throat. “Because it’s beautiful,” she said with a roll of her shoulders that didn’t quite achieve casual. “And it’s kind,” she added. “I wanted to show you something kind after everything you’ve been through. I was hoping…” she stopped and pressed her lips together.

“You were hoping what?” he asked.

“I was hoping that if you saw this…if I could make you realize that you could have it…” she twirled one of her messy curls again. “I was hoping you’d want it enough that I wouldn’t have to take you anywhere else.”

Steve felt his forehead crinkle, the hopelessness and confusion he’d been fighting slid away for a moment as he recognized something new. “Where else would you have to take me?” A chance to be done with all this. To get to the point. To make sense of everything and tell him exactly what he was supposed to do with all everything he’d seen. “What happens if I still don’t get it?”

They were outside again. His companion’s shoulders dropped in resignation after a moment. “Please don’t,” she said softly. “Don’t make me do this.” She reached for his hand—the way Darcy had in his kitchen. That felt so long ago it might as well have been months, not hours. “Let’s go back inside,” she said, not quite reaching his hand with hers. “It’s so nice here. We can—”

“No,” he cut her off firmly. “You said it yourself—you’re the last resort, right? So you tell me. What is this leading to? What happens if nothing changes and I just let everyone be better off without me?”

Her lips pursed again, and Steve saw her throat bob with a hard swallow. She sighed and shook her head with a sad resignation and so much defeat that Steve almost told her he’d changed his mind. She pointed to the last door in the row, the furthest from where they’d entered before. “In there,” she said in a hollow sounding voice. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He noticed the light first as they stepped through the door. This light was warmer, its source a small desk lamp with a shaded yellow bulb, and the room he’d found himself in was smaller—much smaller. An office, he realized. A nice office—maybe—underneath all the mess.

A large desk took up most of the space, littered with papers, calendar books, an open laptop and two cellphones. There was a bookcase against one wall stuffed with black binder, all identical in size and width, and a rolling leather chair behind the desk with barely enough room to move without crashing into the window behind it.

He looked out the window, surprised to find that whoever had this office had a view of DC. Not much. A patch of the city and a clip of the mall, but it was enough for him to recognize. He looked around again. “Are we at the Pentagon?”

“Nope,” his guide said, not bothering to hide the way the demand to bring him here had upset her.

“So…where are we?”

Before she could answer, the door burst open and a tornado of a white silk blouse and dark hair, swirling with a flurry of papers and with a third cellphone pressed to her ear entered the room. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Darcy hissed as she dropped everything onto the disaster of a desk and righted herself. She grimaced. “I’m not saying that to _you,_ ” she said to whoever was on the phone. “I just…I can’t talk right now. I’m late and I—” her eyes fell to the clock displayed on one of the other devices and nearly bugged out of her head. “I gotta go.” She hung up abruptly and started rifling through her mess before she found what she was looking for and tore out of the room again.

Steve was dumbstruck. He knew it was Darcy because he’d heard her voice, knew her mannerisms and the way she spoke, but otherwise, she might as well have been a stranger. She was too thin and her face was pale and only drew more attention to the dark circles beneath her tired eyes. Her lips looked lifeless without their usual stain of dark red and her fingernails and cuticles were chewed down to nothing.

“We need to follow her,” his ghost said, pointing in the direction Darcy had just bolted.

“Where is she going?” he asked, falling into step, keeping Darcy in his line of sight. They made their way down the hall. There were other closed doors on either side before it opened to a staircase and Darcy went up.

“Standard nightly briefing with President Ross,” the answer came from behind him where, despite her telling him to hurry, his guide was lagging a few stairs behind. “Normally the whole staff would be on break for the holiday but…”

“President Ross,” Steve said under his breath before he stopped and turned around. “ _President_?” he repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Presidential election, 2028,” she said as if reading from a history book. “He lost the popular vote, but no one ever got around to abolishing the electoral college so…” she shrugged. “Y’know.”

They’d reached the top of the stairs while Steve was trying to absorb this information. “If Ross is president that means…” he felt his stomach turn. “The Accords are still—”

“Still in place,” he was assured to his dismay. “Stronger than ever. Mandatory registration for all enhanced individuals worldwide makes it _really_ easy to discriminate and oppress the greatest amount of people with the least amount of effort. He’s—” she shook her head. “He’s incredibly proud of that.”

“Are you telling me this is _my_ fault?”

“Oh,” she waved a hand. “No. This is terrible and I’m pretty sure entirely preventable but, surprisingly, not _actually_ your fault.”

Steve had been to the White House before, but he’d never seen this much of the West Wing. Ahead of them, he watched Darcy navigate around two exhausted looking suits and dart into the second room on the left. They followed and he only had a minute to really look at her—to take in all the ways she looked exhausted and sad and anxious—before the door opened and his blood ran cold.

Ross was just as polished and put together as he remembered, but with an added layer of confidence that made Steve wish he’d punched him in the face when he’d had the chance. He closed the door behind him and shut his eyes, taking in a deep breath.

Darcy’s features tightened in the slightest bit of a wince and Steve desperately wished this were real if only because it meant he could stand in front of her—stand between her and whatever was about to come from Ross.

“What did you tell me, Lewis?” he asked as he opened his eyes and crossed to the table where she was standing, having set her papers down in a neat stack atop the mahogany.

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. Steve saw the muscle at the side of her jaw tighten before she spoke. “I never told you he was going to be there.”

“She _works_ for him?” Steve asked, finally putting two-and-two together. “Why would she do that? She hates him as much as I do.”

Before he could get an answer, two red splotches appeared on Ross’ pallid cheeks and his eyes flashed with anger. “You said—”

“I _said_ that Sam Wilson deserved a state-goddamn-funeral after everything he’s done for this country,” she raised her voice to speak over him and Steve was so taken aback he nearly missed what she’d said. “ _You’re_ the one who wanted to turn into a sting operation.”

He felt his mouth run dry and a wave of vertigo hit him hard. He gripped the back of the nearest chair and felt a pair of eyes watching him closely. “Sam?” he asked when he looked. “What happened to Sam?”

His companion frowned again and dropped her eyes. “There was…um,” she coughed and looked up again. “He was on a mission—it was supposed to be routine and easy—but there was an ambush and he um…” she paused and shook her head again. “He didn’t have any backup.”

“What about Bucky?” he asked, his heart hammering somewhere high in his throat. “Or Wanda? Natasha—”

“No one’s seen Natasha for months,” she answered. “And Bucky… Ross had him on a separate mission,” she said quietly.

“Why are they running missions for Ross anyway?” he demanded. “What the hell happened?”

“It’s part of the agreement,” she shrugged. “Darcy helped facilitate, trying to keep as many of her friends out of prison or…” she shook her head and didn’t finish. “Sam and Bucky work for the government now. Just like Ross wanted to begin with. No more Avengers. They go where he tells them and more often than not, he splits them up. The day Sam died, Bucky was looking for you.”

“Where am I?” he demanded. “Why wouldn’t Sam have asked for my help?”

“That’s kind of the question,” she shrugged and motioned with her eyes back to Ross and Darcy. “Isn’t it?”

“You said he’d be there,” Ross insisted, crossing another few steps closer to Darcy.

She didn’t move. “If you think I’m going to apologize for you accidentally looking like you gave a shit about Sam and wanted to honor his memory then I guess I’m sorry to disappoint you. And all I said about your little bait and switch idea was that the Steve I knew would want to be there for Sam,” she repeated, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “But the guy you’re looking for, who you _think_ is out there blowing up your weapons facilities and internment camps is not exactly the same guy.”

“Did she say internment camps?” Steve asked as a flash of a memory of Wanda returned to the front of his mind. In her straight jacket on the Raft, a heavy collar around her neck disabling her powers. It had taken months to draw her out from the shadow those few days had cast. “Wanda—”

His ghost shook her head and Steve felt more certain than ever that he was going to be sick. Sam and Wanda both dead. Bucky out on his own. Natasha disappearing again without a trace. 

“I don’t _think_ it’s Rogers, I know,” Ross said, drawing Steve's attention again, raising his voice over Darcy’s and getting close enough that he was standing over her, looking down to speak to her. “And while he’s out there terrorizing my administration and risking God knows how many lives on his little vengeance mission, I’m supposed to what? Twiddle my thumbs and hope that your connections finally prove useful?”

Darcy still hadn’t moved. Steve felt a little flicker of pride in the way she was staring at him and realized that if he’d really been there, she wouldn’t have needed him to stand in front of her. He watched her take a deep breath and straighten her shoulders even further. “If you had been listening to a single word I’ve said for the last two years, you would have heard me tell you a million times that I’m _not_ the key to you finally bringing him into custody. I don’t know him anymore.”

That hit him with a chill—like swallowing an ice cube whole. The way Darcy said it—the way her hands were still balled in fists, the set of her jaw and the ferocity with which she’d ground the words through her teeth—it turned his blood cold.

Ross only raised his silver eyebrows. “Yeah?” he asked as his lips slid into a smirk. “And whose fault is that?”

“My fault,” Steve said softly, coming to stand behind her. He wanted to touch her so badly it hurt. If he could just put a hand on her shoulder, let her know he was there and he didn’t blame her for anything. That _none_ of this was her fault. But again, when he tried, his hand passed through her like smoke. “It’s my fault—why is he—” he looked over at his ghost. “Is this how he talks to her every day?”

Another shrug. “More or less. She usually doesn’t let it bother her but…well,” her lips turned down again. “It’s been a hard couple months.”

“Maybe if you’d been able to hold his interest, I wouldn’t have an international incident on my hands every other week.”

Darcy closed her eyes and a brief, joyless smile graced her lips before she opened them again. “And here I was thinking you hired me for my brain.”

Steve watched in disbelief as Ross raised a hand and plucked open the top button of Darcy’s silk top, exposing another few inches of skin. Nothing revealing. Nothing she would have been embarrassed of if she’d chosen to leave that button open herself.

But she hadn’t chosen to do that. And Steve thought the rage that flooded his body might finally be enough to kill him. 

Ross stepped back quickly—too quick for her to smack his hand away or even move out of his grasp—and shook his head. “Your brain isn’t exactly your best feature, Lewis,” he said, and placed a hand on the doorknob. “Maybe think about that while you’re off the next couple days. And uh,” he turned back with another disgusting smile. “Merry Christmas.”

Darcy was still standing stock still. She waited until the door clicked shut before she closed her eyes and exhaled. She fumbled to close her button again and let out a shaky exhale as she sank into one of the chairs around the conference table and dropped her head into her hands. Two tears streaked down her pale cheeks and Steve felt every part of his heart break as he stood, useless, beside her. She unearthed her phone from beneath the pile of papers and Steve watched as she flipped through screens to retrieve a folder of photos. She swiped through quickly until she stopped on one that took the breath from his lungs in a sharp inhale.

It was a group photo of his whole life. All his friends he’d gathered around himself since he’d woken up from the ice. Banner, the Bartons, Thor, Jane, Fury, Selvig, Hill, Scott and Cassie, everyone had crammed into the frame somehow and right in the front—his heart swelled painfully in his chest. Wanda with her arm around Darcy, leaning against her like a sister. Darcy tipping her head to Wanda’s with her other arm around Sam. Sam smiling so bright it was nearly blinding, sandwiching Natasha between himself and Bucky. Everyone was laughing. Happy. So beautiful he almost had to look away.

A photo of his whole life—the realization punched him squarely in the chest—and he wasn’t in it.

Darcy pinched at the screen until just the front row was at the center of the frame. His people. His family. All the reasons he’d come back from returning the stones in the first place. “I’m sorry,” she breathed as two tears splattered on the glass. “I’m so sorry.”

She moved her thumb gently over Sam’s face, and then Wanda’s before she swiped roughly beneath her eyes and sniffed back any more tears. Gathering herself together, along with her papers and phone, Darcy got to her feet and made her way back to her office.

He expected to follow her again, but when he reached to catch the door, it opened out onto the street. Steve stopped and looked around, confused. He was at an intersection in DC, he recognized the street signs at the corner. The roads were dark and wet and he was freezing. Much colder than when he’d been outside before.

He turned to ask what had happened, why the change—why did this feel so much more real than all the other tableaus—but there was no one beside him. He looked all around, squinting in the dark to see if she was waiting across the street or a little further off.

“Hey,” he called, looking to his right where she’d been moments before. He cleared his throat and took a chance on his hunch. “Tali?” he glanced around again. “Natalia?” But even if he was right, even if she had been the grown-up version of the little girl she’d shown him, come to nudge him toward a future where she got to exist, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. She was gone and he was alone.

“Now what?” he asked out loud. “What am I supposed to—”

His world split before he could finish the question and Steve was overwhelmed with the unmistakable sensation of being in two places at once. Still rooted in place on the corner while somehow in the front seat of a car. He looked left and his heart sank with dread. Darcy’s car. Darcy’s car that was going way too fast—he could feel it, the tires slipping on the icy pavement, the way the world was whirling past the window. Darcy’s car that was going way too fast for how little its driver was paying attention. No seat belt. One hand on the wheel, the other clutching her phone, her thumb flipping through emails and messages, her eyes bouncing from the screen to the windshield and back again.

“Darcy, slow down,” Steve warned as he felt the tires slide again. He gripped the door handle when she didn’t react. Of course she didn’t react. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t do anything but watch, frozen on the street and invisible at her side. “Goddammit, Darcy, _pay_ _attention_ ,” he demanded.

His perspective shifted and the street was in front of him. He saw the other car barreling down the street. He saw it slide as it tried to slow down for the stop sign. Saw it drift into the other lane when it hit the patch of black ice.

And then he was back in Darcy’s car, watching the headlights from the oncoming car wash over her face, finally pulling her attention up from her phone. Her eyes widened and her hands scrambled for purchase around the steering wheel as her mouth opened in a silent scream.

He was on the street again in time to watch the oncoming SUV plow directly into Darcy’s car. A cacophony of crumpling metal and shattering glass. The SUV tore through the front of Darcy’s sedan and rolled to its side with a thunderous crash. Steve watched in horror as Darcy was thrown through her windshield—her body flung like a ragdoll through broken glass and twisted metal to land on the pavement with a sickening thud.

His feet were moving before he could question the futility of his actions. He hit the ground hard and nearly cried with relief when his hands connected with Darcy’s body. She was warm and solid and he could _touch_ her. The relief was short lived as the hand that had reached her first came away bloody. Steve sucked in a breath and forced himself to focus as he rolled her slowly, carefully to her side.

Her face was streaked with blood, her scalp was soaked from the wound at her hairline. Her body covered in gashes and blood and gravel. But she groaned when he pushed her hair back and his heart leapt up into his throat. “Darcy?” he asked, gathering her gently into his arms. He could feel her broken bones beneath her skin. Sharp angles and nauseating crunching stopped him from moving her any further. “It’s okay,” he promised. “You’re okay.”

Her eyes fluttered open and through the blood he was trying to wipe from her face, he saw her eyebrows dip together. “Steve?” she rasped. “Is that you?”

His vision swam and he blinked rapidly, forcing an expression he hoped was comforting. “Yeah,” he nodded, and bent to kiss her forehead. “It’s me. I’m here.”

“How—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. He didn’t want to think about what this meant. About the possibility that if he was here, if he was able to do this, if everything felt so horrible, painfully _real_ , then something had gone very wrong and he’d been transported here. For real. Not just as a cautionary tale. That somehow this was the world he would have to live in. “It doesn’t matter,” he said again, meaning it. “I’m here, I got you,” his hands were shaking as he tried to wipe her face again. “You’re fine; this-this--this isn't that bad, okay? It's nothing. You're gonna be fine.”

“I can’t—” her voice was barely a whisper and her eyes started to drift closed again.

“Nonononono,” Steve said, unable to keep the edge of panic from his voice. “Darcy—come on, stay awake. I’m here,” he said again. “I’m here. I’m gonna take care of you. I’ll fix all this. _Darcy_ —”

He heard the car only a second before they were bathed in headlights. But by then it was too late. In his haste to get to her, in the shock of being able to touch her, he hadn’t thought to pick her up. To get them both off the street. There was the sound of squealing tires as the oncoming car hit the same patch of ice.

A horn blared in a vain attempt at a warning.

Steve turned his face against the blinding white lights and shielded Darcy’s body with his as best he could. There was the sound of more metal crashing. The smell of gasoline and motor oil. His heart seized in dread for one long moment before everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Borrowed from this chapter:  
> -one of my favorite moments from Angel  
> -all of my loathing for the current state of my country and its "leadership"


	5. Christmas Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve  
> (again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so so much for reading along with me, slogging through the angst and sads, and arriving mostly intact for the conclusion. 
> 
> A lot more of myself ended up in this fic than I'd initially intended and I've ended up holding this fic pretty close to my heart.
> 
> I hope this ending is what you all wanted and were hoping for. And I wish for all the magic of the holidays to fall around you like confetti. 
> 
> *kisses*

V. 

_“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy...A merry Christmas to everybody!”_

He was aware of the pain before anything else. A dull, throbbing ache from somewhere at the back of his head. Something cold and wet hit his face. And again. And a third time before he heard it.

His name.

Muffled and sounding as though someone had stuffed his ears with cotton, but he could still hear it. Someone was saying his name.

“Come on, Steve, open your eyes.” A hand touched his face. Gentle. Tentative. “Come on.” His senses were sharpening again. It was a woman’s voice. “Come back now.”

He forced his eyes to open as another fat, wet snowflake hit his cheek and found a familiar face staring down at him. Her green eyes wide and her features pinched in worry that dissolved the second he blinked. “Wanda?”

Wanda let out a sound of relief and nodded. “Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay? Do you know what happened?”

Did he know what happened? Steve closed his eyes again, trying to sort through the images still swirling. “I was on the street,” he said slowly. “There was a car…” Cars colliding, the crunch of metal, the broken glass. The blood. So much blood. Darcy's blood. 

“You got hit by a car?” Wanda asked, interrupting his thoughts as his heart started to race again. He had to get to Darcy. He had to make sure she was okay. 

He shook his head. “No. Not—” he stopped himself and forced his eyes open again. “Wanda,” he repeated as the realization dawned.

“Yes…” she said slowly, her eyebrows dipped together in concern. “Are you hurt?”

“You’re okay,” he said out loud, struggling to pull himself up to sit.

She placed a hand on his chest and tried to push him back down. “Of course I am,” she scoffed, not noticing how her words and the bemused half-smile they wrapped around had flooded him with relief. Wanda was alive. Wanda hadn’t died alone in an internment camp somewhere after he’d failed to keep her safe. “But I don’t think you are—don’t move. I’m worried about your head.” She tapped at her ear. “Sam?” Steve’s heart jumped again.

“Sam’s okay too,” he realized out loud.

Wanda gave him another strange look. “I found him,” she said, relief evident in her voice. “I think he’s okay—”

“I’m fine,” he said, sitting all the way up, despite how she tried to make him lay back down.

“Come get us,” Wanda was saying to Sam before she squinted down the block and gave him the cross-streets. “We’ll wait for you,” she said before she tapped her comm again.

Steve felt a cautious smile come over his face. They were going to wait for Sam to pick them up, and he was going to because he was alive. Just like Wanda. He hadn’t lost them. Carefully, he brought a hand to the back of his head, feeling for blood or at least a bump, but there was nothing. A little tender to the touch, but nothing that felt too dire.

“Steve,” Wanda’s hand was on his shoulder as she peered into his face, checking for signs of a concussion. “I don’t think you should be moving.” She held up three fingers. “How many?”

“Three,” he said automatically as the memory of an excited little voice echoed, _I ate free, cause_ I’m _free!_ He smiled again. “I’m fine, Wanda,” he said firmly. “Better than fine,” he said in the moment before he reached out and hugged her, wanting to be sure once and for all that she was real. She was real and _here_ and he was too and nothing he’d just seen had really happened. She was stunned for a second before she laughed and hugged him back. He let her go, but just enough to pull her down and press a hard kiss on the top of her head. “I’m great,” he said as he released her. “Everything’s great.”

She was laughing and shaking her head when Sam’s car rolled to a stop beside them. “Hey,” Sam called as he hopped out of the driver’s seat and hurried to the sidewalk. Steve felt his heart stop as another memory seized him. This one of how the world had tilted violently at the news that Sam was dead. How it had felt like someone had removed his leg without warning. How the weight of that loss had been too much, too severe to process in the little time he’d had to absorb it. “Steve, you good?”

He offered his hand and Steve took it, allowing himself to be pulled up to his feet. He let go of Sam’s hand as soon as he was upright and pulled him in for a tight hug. Like Wanda, it took Sam a moment to realize what had happened. He hugged back loosely, uncertainly at first before he seemed to realize that Steve hadn’t let him go yet. But when his arms tightened around him, fine with holding on a little longer, Steve’s vision swam and it felt like something dislodged in his chest making it suddenly, ridiculously easier to breathe. Sam patted his shoulder but didn’t pull away. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked quietly.

Steve nodded, blinking rapidly as he finally let Sam go. “Yeah,” he said with a soft laugh as they stepped apart. “I’m just—” he coughed. “I’m just really happy to see you guys.”

Sam and Wanda exchanged a glance before she squinted her eyes and stepped closer to him again. “You’re sure there’s no concussion?” she asked, but Steve caught the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

He smiled too. “No concussion,” he promised.

Sam clapped him on the shoulder and steered them all toward the car. “We’re happy to see you, too.” He tapped his com twice as Wanda climbed into the backseat, leaving the front for Steve. “Hey,” he said with a quick glance in Steve’s direction before he smiled. “Target’s secure. Head home.” He paused as they both ducked into the front of the car. “No, Nat, I’m not going to tell him that…” his face wrinkled. “Because it’s graphic and horrible and half in Russian, that’s why not.”

Steve smiled at the familiar sounds of good-natured sniping and shook his head. He waited until Sam tapped out of the conversation and put the car in gear before he asked, “You had Natasha out looking for me too?”

“No, man,” Sam glanced over. “We had everyone looking for you. It’s a big city,” he went on, unaware that his words had made Steve’s heart swell unexpectedly. “No one knew where you were, and Wanda thought you went after this Daken guy—”

“I know,” Steve said quietly. “I—I want to tell you guys what I’ve been doing. I shouldn’t be trying to—” he stopped and turned around to look at Wanda. “I’m sorry I worried you. Not just tonight—” he added hastily. “I know I’ve been…”

“Difficult,” Wanda finished for him when he trailed off.

He glanced up to find her offering him a half smile. “That’s putting it nicely.”

She shrugged. “Well it’s Christmas,” she reminded. There was a teasing lilt in her voice—the way she used to talk to him, to Clint, to Sam. It was the way she used to talk to Pietro, too. “You’re supposed to be nicer to your family at Christmas.”

As they drew closer to the tower, Steve’s stomach clenched with anxiety. If Sam had had everyone out looking for him, they’d all be waiting for him when they got back. All the people he’d been hurting and pushing away. Maybe Sam and Wanda had been happy to see him but that didn’t guarantee that everyone would be. His eyes fell to the clock in Sam’s car and he stared. “Does that say eight-thirty?”

“Yeah,” Sam said without missing a beat. “How long was your dumb ass laying out in the snow?”

“I don’t…” he frowned. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He knew he’d left for his run before sunset. That would have been around four o’clock. But Darcy and Bucky had been talking around six or seven. The same time Sam had…Steve shook his head. “It felt like a lot longer,” he said finally. Years. It had felt like years had slipped by without his being able to stop them. Like everything had spiraled completely out of his control and too far away to ever get back. “I saw—” he started and stopped again.

He saw what? A vision of a future full of everything he didn’t know he was afraid of? Another one so kind and sweet it almost hurt to think about? The ghosts of his mother, Peggy, and a daughter he didn’t have?

“You saw what?” Wanda prompted gently, leaning forward from the backseat.

He closed his mouth. “Uh, nothing,” he said finally. “Lost my train of thought.” He couldn’t tell them what he’d seen. Not yet. Not right now. Not without sounding completely insane. But for the first time in forever, Steve felt a familiar itch to reach for a pencil and his sketchbook. He wanted to draw it all out, make it make sense to himself before he could share it with anyone else.

There wasn’t time to wonder or worry about who might be back at the tower by the time they arrived. Everyone was waiting in the lobby. A sight that knocked his head back an inch in surprise. It was like the photo he’d seen on Darcy’s phone. _Everyone_ was waiting for them. Clint and Laura, Bruce, Scott, Hope, Cassie and the Barton kids, Thor and Jane, Sam’s sisters. Most looking cold and wet and expectant, but all present, all seeming to have dropped what they were doing to try to find him. His eyes swept the room once, twice, and he realized that wasn’t exactly right. Not quite everyone. Bucky wasn’t there. Neither was Natasha. His heart sank just a bit. Neither was Darcy.

To Steve’s surprise, it was Sam’s mother who approached him first. Before he could try to overthink why Bucky and Nat weren’t back yet—why Darcy wasn’t there—she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly without preamble. His busy mind quieted for the moment and he was reminded again of the warmth of his own mother’s embrace. How good it had felt to be loved and cared for again and shockingly similar it was to what he felt from Darlene. She kissed the side of his head before she pulled back. “It’s cute you thought dying of hypothermia would get you out of a family dinner with us.”

He smiled and felt a blush warm his cheeks. “I’m sorry I missed it,” he said honestly.

“Missed it?” she asked, looking surprised. “Baby, you haven’t missed anything. We weren’t going to eat without you.” She smiled and patted his cheek. “It’s gonna take me a minute to heat it all back up but it’s gonna be just as good.” Without waiting for him to respond, she turned back to the crowd. “He’s here, ya’ll, he’s alive. He ain’t goin’ anywhere. I’m gonna need some help getting dinner on the table.”

There was a murmur of agreement and soft laughter and a strong sense of relief from the entire room that brought another lump to Steve’s throat. There were no angry expressions, he realized. No one who looked like they wished he hadn’t come back. It wasn’t until most of the crowd had filtered back toward the bank of elevators, heading back to Sam’s apartment, that Steve finally found Bucky.

He shuffled forward with Natasha close behind. They both looked extra wet—as though they’d been out in the snow longer than anyone else. Bucky stopped a few feet away and gave Steve a once-over. Steve braced himself, reminding himself that he deserved whatever Bucky was going to say to him. That he’d been a terrible friend to Bucky for a lot longer than anyone else. But all Bucky asked was, “What the hell took you so long?”

Steve opened and closed his mouth once, trying to figure out if there really was a way to explain what he’d been through. A way to apologize and promise to be better, to tell Bucky and Nat, Sam and Wanda, everyone, how much he loved them and how lucky he was to have them all with him. But when he shuffled and cleared his throat, he could only think of one thing. “I uh,” he rubbed at the back of his neck and glanced down at his soaking wet shoes. “I got lost.”

When he looked back up again, a smile had tugged at the corner of Bucky’s lips. “Maybe I should draw you a map next time.”

“Yeah,” Steve huffed, feeling something else loosen in his chest. “That’d be helpful.”

Bucky shook his head. “You really are still a punk, you know that?”

And then Bucky’s arms were around him and Steve felt his eyes blur with tears for the second time that night. “Well,” he managed tightly, waiting for Bucky to be the first to let go. “You’re still a jerk.”

Natasha’s hug was quicker, tighter than Bucky’s, and she gripped a handful of his hair to pull him down to whisper in his ear. “You’ve been scaring the shit out of me,” she said fiercely. “Don’t do it anymore.”

Despite that she was actually hurting him, Steve smiled. “I won’t,” he promised.

There was a sound from behind them as Natasha let him go. The door opening and slamming shut. Steve turned around and saw Darcy standing just inside, snow still stuck in her long, dark hair, cheeks flushed from the cold, breath leaving her lungs in rapid huffs. “I was—” she motioned behind her and exhaled heavily. “I was farther away than I thought. No cabs. Had to walk back.” Her eyes danced from person to person until they finally landed on him and he felt his heart stutter at the sigh of relief that dropped her shoulders. “You’re okay.”

“Uh,” Steve said, willing his shoes to unglue themselves from the floor. He wanted to go to her—touch her, kiss her—make sure she was real and alive and in one piece. Banish the memory of holding her broken body, of all his mistakes somehow compounding against her, of the way she’d insisted she didn’t know him anymore. But his feet wouldn’t move. “Yeah,” he managed finally. “I’m okay.”

He felt a shove from behind him and Natasha cleared her throat. “We should um, go help with dinner.” When no one moved, she cleared her throat. “You three,” she said firmly, and Steve watched Sam, Wanda, and Bucky snap their attention back to her. “We should go help with dinner.”

She shoved him again for good measure as they shuffled out, leaving him alone with Darcy in the otherwise empty lobby. Darcy looked panicked for a moment before she cleared her throat. “That was subtle.”

Natasha’s last push had broken the spell he was under and Steve felt his feet moving on their own until he was right in front of her, close enough to feel how cold she still was, to see the drops of melted snow clinging to her curls. She looked up as if confused to find him standing so close. “Steve, I—” she managed before he took her face in his hands and covered her lips with his. She made a sound of surprise before she relaxed and he felt her lean into him, her hand coming to rest on his chest. Her cheeks were still cold, but the rest of her was warm. Warm and exciting and familiar and here and real and even if she never spoke to him again, she was still safe and alive. Before he could pull her closer and deepen the kiss, Darcy wrenched away and held up a hand. “Hey,” she said, letting go of the handful of his shirt she’d grabbed. “You can’t just—”

“I know,” he said quickly and, to prove it, he took a half step back, giving her space. “I know I’ve been an absolute bastard and you deserve _so_ much better,” he assured her, telling himself he wasn’t going to ramble despite the way he felt the words lining up to fall from his lips. “And I don’t expect you to forgive me or want to give me another chance but I just—” His exhale caught him by surprise and forced him to stop and look at her again. Really look at her. All of her. Her crazy hair and wide hips and full thighs, the gap between her teeth and the fine little lines in her expressions. “I had a really weird, bad night,” he confessed. “And I just needed to make sure you were…”

Darcy lifted her eyebrows expectantly. “You had to make sure I was what?”

“Safe,” he finished. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She wet her lips and nodded slowly. “And…” she ducked her head and met the gaze he’d just dropped to the floor. “Am I okay, Steve?”

“No,” he shook his head. “No, you’re…” he exhaled another nervous breath. “You’re amazing, Darcy. You’re beautiful and brilliant and the funniest person I know, and so much stronger and braver than me and I hate that I made you think that I ever wished you were anybody else. I don’t.” She opened her mouth, looking ready to respond, but closed it again. “Look, you have every right to hate me—I’ve been miserable and reckless and nothing that you deserve but I didn’t want to let you go without telling you that I’m sorry and I never wanted you to be anyone but Darcy.”

Steve watched his words settle in her mind as she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to one side. “And what happened before…” she said slowly. “When you…” she pressed her lips together and frowned thoughtfully. Steve was smacked with another memory—this one of Natalia and the way this exact expression had played on her face—so obvious now it felt crazy that he hadn’t known who she was right away. “How do I know that won’t happen again?”

He took another steadying breath and made himself answer truthfully. “It…uh…it might,” he admitted. Her look of surprise urged him to keep going. “I had a…um…” he coughed. “I had a flashback. I wasn’t—” it was suddenly harder to look at her and his eyes dropped again. “I wasn’t wishing or pretending you were Peggy,” he said toward the floor. “I thought I was…for a second I wasn’t sure if I was here or back there…”

“Back there…in the war?” Darcy asked, her tone had softened even more and when he looked up, her expression had drawn together in concern.

He nodded and rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. “It doesn’t happen all the time but I have um…I have nightmares and these…flashbacks. Where I can’t always tell the difference between what’s real and what’s a memory and…and it’s not an excuse, it’s just.” He shrugged. “Something that I can’t seem to shake.”

Darcy’s teeth had found her bottom lip again and she chewed it for a long moment. “Is it just _that_ war that you go back to?” she asked finally.

Steve closed his eyes and felt a flurry of emotion sting at the back of his nose and throat. “No,” he shook his head. “It’s…it’s all of them. I thought if I could just keep going,” he went on. “If I could just keep finding something to fight then it wouldn’t catch up but…” he let out another shaky exhale. “That doesn’t seem to be working out.”

She was quiet again, the only sound between them the occasional drip of melted snow onto the polished floors. After what seemed like almost too long, Darcy pushed her hair back and let out a heavy sigh. “Steve, I don’t—”she stopped and frowned and shook her head, deciding to start over. “I don’t want to kick you out of my life or never see you again,” she began, and Steve did his best not to get too hopeful before she added whatever _but_ was coming. “But I don’t want to feel like I’m the only one in this relationship.” She shrugged her shoulders. “And I don’t want to keep pretending like what I feel for you is just casual because it isn’t and it hasn’t been for a while. I want you. I want to be with you,” she said firmly. “But not…” she frowned and shook her head. “Not if being with me is just going to be one more thing for you to fight against.”

“Okay.”

Darcy blinked. “Okay?” she repeated. “Just like that? Okay?”

Steve felt the beginning of a smile play on his lips. “Darcy,” he took a chance and took a small step forward, hoping she wouldn’t back up. “I can’t exactly explain everything,” he said carefully. “But there was a moment tonight when I thought I’d lost you—really, _really_ lost you—and I’ve never been so scared in my life.” She hadn’t moved away from him, so he took another chance and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’m tired of fighting,” he admitted. “And being afraid of what would happen if I let myself get close to you.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen if you let yourself get close to me,” she said softly, her eyes were wide and blue and honest as she looked up at him. “I just have to know that you want me, too.”

He leaned in and kissed her again. A long, slow kiss without the traces of panic he’d poured into the last one. She melted against him immediately this time, sliding her hands up his chest when he pulled her in closer. He sank one hand into her wet and messy hair while the other spanned her back, keeping her tight against him. She pulled away first, breathless as he pressed his lips to her forehead and felt her heart hammering close to his. “I want you, Darcy.”

“Okay,” she whispered with a small smile he could hear in her voice.

She stretched up on her toes to kiss him again, but the moment before her lips met his, there was a cough from the right. They turned to see Scott clearing his throat. “Hey,” he said cheerfully. “No idea how I drew the short straw to come down and interrupt this,” he motioned to the two of them before he jerked his thumbs toward the elevators. “But dinner’s ready. Again.”

Steve smiled and nodded. “We’ll be right up,” he promised. He waited until they were alone before he kissed her again. Sweet and shorter than he would have liked, but after everything that had happened, he didn’t want to keep anyone else waiting.

Darcy grabbed hold of his hand as he pulled away. “Wait,” she said. “I want to keep talking to you.”

His smile felt a little less certain as he squeezed her hand. “I want to keep talking to you, too.”

“I mean,” she bit her lip again. “About what you’re going through,” she clarified. “I don’t want that to get lost in the making up. I want you to tell me about it, okay?”

He swallowed and made himself nod. “Okay.”

She smiled then, a real, bright, Darcy smile that had him wondering how he could have ever been ready to let her out of his life. “Alright then,” she nodded and laced her fingers with his. “Let’s go eat dinner, Mr. Grinch. There’s a roast beast with your name on it.”

He followed her up to Sam’s apartment, which they found full of food and warmth and a family that loved him.

***

It was much later that Steve let the back of his hand drift along Darcy’s skin. The city lights coming in through the window made the pale expanse of her back practically glow in the dark of his room. She smiled sleepily as she pulled one of her hands from beneath the pillow and reached out to push back his hair. “You sure you want me to stay over?” she asked softly, a flicker of insecurity in her eyes.

Steve felt a stab of regret for all the times either of them had left in the middle of the night. Hastily getting dressed and exchanging quick kisses like a game of who could care less. All the chances he'd missed to fall asleep beside her and wake up together. 

He crossed the small space between them and kissed her slowly, sliding his arm across her back to draw her closer until she was pressed against his chest. Her eyes opened slowly when he pulled away and brushed his nose against hers. “I want you right here,” he said. “As long as you want to stay.”

She smiled against his lips as she leaned in for another kiss. “Good, ” she shifted and let him wrap both arms around her. “I’ll stay.” She broke their next kiss with another smile. “We have a slight problem, though.”

Steve raised his eyebrows and pulled back to study her face. “What’s that?”

Darcy’s cheeks flushed pink and she bit back a guilty grin. “I’m _starving_.” He laughed and she scrunched her nose. “I shouldn’t be,” she added. “I had plenty to eat but—”

He silenced her with a kiss before he set about untangling his legs from hers. “I’m always hungry,” he reminded her. “So I fail to see how this is a problem.”

She rolled lazily back onto her stomach as he sat up and found his pants on the side of the bed. “Unless your plan is to offer me a glass of dijon or one of three nearly empty jars of salsa,” she grinned up at him, stealing his pillow when he looked back down at her, “I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in your entirely empty kitchen.”

He smiled and leaned down to kiss the soft skin of her shoulder. “I’m going to raid the downstairs kitchen for you.”

“Ooh the fancy kitchen,” she commented with a giggle. “How’d I get so lucky?”

He pushed the hair out of her eyes. “Any requests?”

“Cheese.”

“I think I can handle that.”

At nearly three in the morning, Steve wasn’t expecting anyone else to be awake. He frowned in confusion when he realized that the community kitchen was not empty. Sam sat at the counter, flipping idly through a magazine. He looked up as Steve approached the refrigerator. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve echoed before he smiled. “Waiting up for Santa or something?”

Sam smirked and shook his head. “No, I got all my rooms full of light sleepers and tossing and turning on the couch isn’t as comfortable as I thought it’d be.” He nodded in Steve’s direction. “How ‘bout you?”

“Oh,” he felt the tops of his ears burn. “Darcy’s hungry and I don’t have any food in my apartment.”

Sam’s smile widened. “I’m glad she decided to give you another chance,” he said. “She’s good for you.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “She is.” He opened the refrigerator and found three different kinds of cheese before he set them on a plate with an apple and closed the door. Sam had returned to his magazine and Steve stopped in the doorway, trying not to talk himself out of what he was about to do. He cleared his throat. “Sam?”

He looked up and closed the pages in front of him. “What’s up?”

“I’m—” he paused and started over. “I know it’s not…well, it hasn’t been your job for a long time, but I um—" He wanted to smack himself. Every terrifying thing he’d ever faced and finishing _this_ question had him in a cold sweat. “I’m having…trouble,” he said finally. “A lot of trouble, actually.” Sam didn’t respond, but his face was open, curious, understanding. “I was wondering if you could—um—help me find somebody to talk to?” He hated how his voice nearly cracked at the end of his sentence. How obviously uncomfortable he was just asking this much. “Like a,” he coughed again, “a counselor or a therapist?”

Sam could have said no. He could have told him he didn’t have time or that there was nothing he could do that Steve couldn’t do on his own. But Sam only nodded. “Yeah. I can help you with that. One condition,” he added before Steve could feel too relieved. “You let me in on what you’ve been doing down at Sister Margaret’s. No more solo suicide missions. Deal?”

Steve felt himself nod before he could overthink it. “Deal.”

Sam’s smile was warm, encouraging and assured him he hadn’t made a mistake coming to him for help. “My family flies home on the 27th,” he said. “You gonna be around to talk after that?”

“Yeah,” he nodded again, mirroring Sam’s smile. “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” He motioned with his chin to the plate of cheese and fruit still clutched in Steve’s hand. “You better get back,” he grinned. “That girl already forgave your dumb ass once tonight.” 

He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, you’re right. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

He turned to leave before he stopped a second time. “Thanks,” he said abruptly, pulling Sam’s attention back from where he’d started walking toward the refrigerator. “For coming to get me,” he clarified, when Sam looked confused. “For sending everyone out looking for me.”

The confusion cleared from Sam’s face and that welcoming smile reappeared. The one that had first told Steve he was someone to trust. That had assured him he’d made a friend. That everything in this new and challenging century wasn’t going to be just hard and painful--that there would be good again. “Always, man,” he said with a gravity in his tone that made Steve want to hug him again.

He settled for another smile and a nod as he swallowed back the lump that had risen in his throat. “Hope you get some rest,” he said, raising his hand in farewell.

“Thanks, Steve,” Sam offered a half, two-fingered salute. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

The sun rose, and the morning of December 25th dawned soft and icy and pink. And Steve Rogers didn’t hate Christmas anymore.

_“He became as good a friend…and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”_

_-Charles Dickens_

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> May your days be merry and bright this December. I love you guys.  
> <3


End file.
